Transcription
Translator: Leen Sattout
Reviewer: Walaa Mohammed
(Applause)
I ask you to participate in this experiment. When you leave this room, I want you to wander outside, today and tomorrow, or whenever you wish. I want you to ask and answer one question that is posed to you by a stranger. You might meet these people on the bus, or as you walk down the street. I will show you the question that I will ask you to answer and to ask. The question is as follows: "When was the last time you cried in front of someone?" And out of curiosity, how many of you feel excited about this experiment? No hands are raised yet. This makes sense, right? Because finding a stranger and asking them when they cried in front of someone else, nothing can match the terror of this situation, or be less enjoyable, and then to tell them yourself about the time you cried in front of someone else. But I will try to convince you that doing this experiment is not just a valuable experience, but an experience that should be repeated whenever you can, because it will change your life for the better. To explain how I reached this point, I must tell you a small story about my wife and me. Several years ago, we were stuck in a bad pattern. We had been married for 20 years, but I would come home after a long day at the office. I was a correspondent for The New York Times at the time, and I started complaining about my day, and about feeling like I wasn't appreciated enough. My wife offered me advice logically. "Why don't you and your boss go out for lunch? You can get to know each other better." Instead of listening to her, I got even angrier than before. And I would say to her, "Why don't you support me? You should be angry on my behalf." And she would get upset in turn because I was attacking her for giving me good advice. This was not... Has anyone here experienced this before? It's definitely not a good situation. So, I started talking to researchers specializing in communication studies. I asked them, "Why am I stuck in this pattern?" And they answered me: "Because you are falling into this mistake." We are living through the golden age of understanding communication for the first time truly, due to advancements in neuroimaging and data collection. And they told me one of the biggest things I learned is that we tend to think that a discussion is just one conversation. We talk about one thing: my day, the children's grades, or what we want to eat for dinner. But what they said is that every conversation, in reality, involves many different conversations. And generally, these conversations tend to be classified into one of these three categories. Practical conversations, where we talk about what the subject is about, what we are actually discussing. And there are emotional conversations, where we talk about how we feel. My goal is to share my feelings with you. I don't want you to solve them; I want you to empathize with me. And then there are social conversations, which are about us, about who we are and what social identities are important to us, how we connect with each other and with society. The researchers pointed out that they reached the conclusion that if people engage in multiple conversations at the same time, they will not be able to actually hear each other. They cannot communicate with each other. And this is exactly what happened between my wife and me, right? I was coming home and having an emotional conversation. And my wife was responding with a practical conversation. These two conversations, both are fundamental conversations, but we will not have these two conversations at the same time. We were not actually communicating with each other. This perspective became extremely important within psychology and neuroscience and became known as the principle of matching, meaning that successful communication requires recognizing what type of conversation is being held and then matching each other. How can we do this? Well, in school, they taught teachers how to do this. If you are a teacher in a school, you will learn at some point that if a student comes to you with a problem or something to talk about, you should ask them, "Do you want help?" which is a practical conversation. "Do you want a hug?" which is an emotional conversation. Or "Do you want me to listen to you?" which is a social conversation. And it seems to be an effective method. If you ask students what they need, they will tell you. But of course, it's difficult to do this in real life, right? But if you approach someone at work and ask them if they want a hug, the HR department will intervene, so I don't advise you to do that. But fortunately, there is another way to do this for ordinary people like us, which is to ask questions, especially a specific type of question, a special question known as a deep question. A deep question invites us to talk about our values, beliefs, or experiences. And this question can be a little scary, but it's much easier than it seems. For example, instead of asking, "Where do you work?" you can ask, "What do you like about your job?" Instead of asking, "Where did you go to high school?" you can ask, "How was high school for you? What did you learn there? How did it change you?" Let's change the phrasing of the question. Instead of asking someone to give you facts about their life, we should ask them how they feel about their life. Because when we do this, they tend to reveal their true selves. They tend to tell us what they want, not just for this conversation, but what they hope we will see and what they want us to see, and what matters to them. In fact, studies show us that this is a powerful strategy, because this type of question allows us to be sensitive. Sensitivity and its exchange, when we hear someone speak with sensitivity, we become sensitive in return, and this is the key that allows us to connect with other people. To explain how this works, I want to tell you a story about this person, Dr. Bevan Edie. Dr. Edie is a cancer surgeon in New York City. He specializes in prostate cancer, removing prostate tumors... removing cancerous tumors from the prostate, and he has this interesting job, because every day a patient comes to his office for medical advice, he thinks and tells them: "You should not have surgery." The prostate is near the nerves that control urination and sexual function, and it is a rather dangerous operation. Moreover, prostate tumors grow very slowly. It is truly one of the slowest-growing forms of cancer in existence. There is a saying among doctors that if you have an elderly patient with prostate cancer, they will die of old age before the cancer kills them. And so, the doctor will tell these patients, "Look, I don't think you should do anything. You should do some active surveillance. And what we will do is take a blood sample every 6 months, we will do a biopsy every two years, and if the tumor changes, we will do an MRI. And if we have to do surgery, we will do it. If things are the opposite, no scans, no surgery. And you will be fine." These patients listen to him, go home to discuss the matter with their partners. And then they will come the next day and insist on surgery. And they will say, "I want you to tear me apart and remove the tumor as soon as possible." This was astonishing to Dr. Edie, right? Because he thought it would be the easiest conversation of his life. He tells people not to have surgery, and he is essentially a surgeon. Dr. Edie told me that this kept happening. You start to realize that the problem is not with the patients. The problem is with me. I am definitely making a mistake. So he consulted university professors at Harvard Business School and asked for their advice on what he should do differently. And they told him: "Your biggest mistake is starting the conversation completely wrong. You start the conversation by assuming that the patient coming to the examination room is looking for medical advice and consultation. But you are not sure of the validity of this assumption, and you do not ask them any questions. What you should do is start by asking deep questions." And two weeks after having this conversation, a 63-year-old man came to Dr. Edie's office for the first time. He had been diagnosed with prostate cancer. Instead of Dr. Edie giving him advice, and instead of dictating to him what he should do, he asked him the following question: "What does your cancer diagnosis mean to you?" And this man began to talk about the death of his father when he was 17 years old. It was very difficult for him, and for his mother as well. And then he began to talk about work, and how if younger employees found out about his cancer diagnosis, they would look at him differently. And they would consider him already dead, even though he still had 20 or 30 years in his career. And he began to talk about his grandchildren and his fear of what the world would bring them, and about climate change and everything that is happening. Dr. Edie expected this man to mention cancer, or to mention death or pain, but he didn't mention any of them at all. And at that moment, Dr. Edie realized that because of this deep question, what this man wanted was to have an emotional conversation. He wanted to talk about how he felt. And about his need for a hug. The doctor didn't actually hug him, but he did the verbal equivalent of a hug. He began to talk about his understanding of his father's illness and the terror it caused them, but about the closeness it brought in ways he never expected. They talked about this for eight minutes. And then the doctor said, "Would you allow me to share some medical options that I would like to discuss with you? Is that okay?" And they moved on to have a practical conversation together. And within seven minutes, the man decided to do active surveillance and not go back. Most of Dr. Edie's patients choose active surveillance and follow his advice because of his approach. We can do this in any conversation. It doesn't have to be a life-or-death conversation. We can connect with each other better, and in a very important way with the person we are talking to, if we want to. Which reminds me of that experiment. So to remind you of what you are supposed to do: leave the room, find a stranger, and ask them, "When was the last time you cried in front of someone else?" And when they answer, answer the question yourself and tell them about the last time you cried. Let me tell you, this experiment has been done thousands of times, especially by someone named Nick Epley at the University of Chicago. People hate this experiment. There is no one participating in this experiment who says, "I'm looking forward to it... this will be a great time." Instead, they say: "I don't want to do this. It seems scary." But they are in the experiment, so they will do it. You are paired with a partner, and the question is asked, answered, and then asked, and then Nick Epley asks them, "How was the experience?" People will say: "Oh my God, I feel connected to that person, more connected than with people I've had conversations with for a long time. I feel interested in them, I feel like they really care about me. I feel like they listened attentively, and it was easy for me to listen to what they were saying." And in the end, almost everyone says it's one of the best conversations they've had in the past week, month, or year... And they will say things like, "I'm grateful I was with this person because they were a perfect match for me." In fact, the only right thing was that they were strangers who were asked the right question, the right type of question. Why? Why is this question so powerful? Why does asking this question help us connect with each other so well? Because it's a deep question that allows us to share something real. When we ask deep questions, we will realize which of the three types of conversations we are having, what we are talking about, what outcome we will discover through this dialogue, and how connected we are to each other. We live in a time of polarization and division. We have forgotten how to have these conversations. But there is science behind this. There are people known as super-communicators. They are not special, not more charismatic, and not more social than others. But they have learned the skills that allow us to connect with others. And these are skills that we can all learn. That feeling after a great conversation, and that glow you experience, our brains have evolved to give us that, to crave connection. So I hope you will go out and find a stranger, and I hope you will talk about the last time you cried in front of someone else in detail. And then tell me about what happened. Thank you. (Applause)