I am here hear me roar I'm Angela Duckworth I'm Stephen Dubner and you're
listening to No Stupid Questions. Today on the show how can you become a better
communicator? I'm just gonna mimic Barack Obama. You sound a lot like Barack Obama now that I think about it.
Stephen you recently emailed me for my advice. I did. I remember being I think
on my phone and I read your email quickly and I typed out my reply even
more quickly. Oh thanks it's nice to know how much you care. I just want you to know that I hardly thought about it at all.
Angela these are the things that we should think and keep to ourselves and not say
aloud but it's okay because I'm a good friend and I can handle it. Now actually
your answer was really useful so let me give a little context so people know what
we're talking about here. I recently played in a golf tournament in
California and it was an amazing and fascinating experience because the
groupings were a golf pro these were the what they call the seniors the 50 over
PGA Tour players so there was one pro in each group and then two amateurs I was
one of the amateurs and then one what are called a junior who are also
amateurs but these are really really really good young players but this young
athlete whose name is Sarah I played with her and she is amazing she's 16
years old and already a very very very good golfer so she is the kind of person
that could easily become a professional golfer if she keeps at it. Wow! You would
have a field day talking with Sarah because her devotion in the form of a
certain kind of grit is so so deep she gets up at something like 4.30 or 5
every day to work out and then after school is practicing every day and when
you play with her you're not surprised that she works so hard because she's
amazing anyway I played around with her she did very well and then afterwards I
got an email from her dad and I was so kind of moved by it that he was asking
for a little bit of help that I of course wanted to help and I reached out
to you so the dad wrote to me to say that his daughter Sarah she's never been
super talkative in fact she's often pretty quiet and she's a girl of few
words in most interviews but lately she's been practicing her speaking every
night and recording herself on her phone and recently she had been interviewed on
the Golf Channel which is you know this big national in the Golf Channel it's
like 24-7 golf it is and so she felt that her interview on there wasn't great
for instance she used the word awesome three times in like five minutes and I
was like I don't think you can give yourself big demerits for that anyway
the father wrote to ask me since he is under the impression that I am someone
who speaks for a living and does it you know well ish that maybe we could have a
conversation about how to get more comfortable speaking in public and so on
so we set up a zoom call for me and Sarah and her dad in advance sent the
following questions for me to think about trying to go over how do you
suggest she practice how do you know how and when to add humor how to get
relaxed and be yourself while also keeping yourself on task and articulating
your ideas clearly and how do you come up with ideas to speak about on the fly
so the reason I sent this to you and the reason I thought it might be fun to talk
about on this show is it really these questions I think any of us could and
should ask ourselves and other people which is about how do we have a good
conversation with someone how are we a good conversation partner how are we a
good public speaker because really if you think about it we're all
communicating all the time but I thought it was really a good opportunity to take
a step back and ask these questions about how to very deliberately think
about and practice conversing so I send you this list and you wrote back some
really interesting but now I recognize very quickly thumb type I think I was
walking typing and probably eating at the same time okay so you cared very
very little about helping me in this circumstance was spontaneous that would
be one way to describe it I did get a reply from you though and I really liked
your reply in terms of the question about how to get relaxed and be yourself
while also keeping on task you wrote I think it's about being truly in the
moment which means focusing a lot of your attention on the audience there is
relevant research on this but that's the take home don't focus on yourself focus
on the person you're talking to so tell me about that research and why we're
convinced that's the right thing to do well there is this research by Ellen
Langer I feel we should add Ellen Langer to the drinking list yeah
absolutely you know what she's just one of the most creative she has like ideas
that are just like they're good but they're just so out there like wait
what brain created that idea and since we've missed the opportunity in the
past for those of you who do drink along when we say Danny Kahneman Marty
Seligman Ellen Langer now let's make up for lost time ready on the count of three
repeat it one two three you know what this sounds like we're trying to summon
her it's like we say it at the same time Steven shall appear you never know you
watched I dream of genie did you not oh yes I did I think that wins the award for
the most misogynist show in the history of TV she like lives in a bottle she has
a master I mean everything about that show was wrong oh my gosh I forgot about
all the details whereas bewitched which on the surface seem kind of similar no
no no no she had a lot of agency oh yes that's right gosh imagine the comp lit
possibilities please compare and contrast I dream of genie with bewitched
that cannot have not been written don't you think there's got to be a good
thesis out there somewhere somewhere in a liberal art school some of these done
their thesis so anyway Ellen Langer as you were saying okay so Ellen Langer
Harvard psychologist had a study the basic idea was she wondered how it was
that a symphony orchestra might do the same performance so I don't know like
Beethoven's fifth again and again and again or can you imagine like having to
play the Nutcracker again cuz it's December how do you not let your
performance go stale but what Ellen Langer did in this study that I can't
remember the exact details of is that she had this hypothesis that if you have
a kind of mindful state I think when Ellen Langer uses the term mindfulness
she means it as being like fully attuned to all the nuances of what's going on in
your immediate environment but anyway what she found is that they sound better
so there are these symphony orchestra musicians and they are asked to play a
given symphony I think it's one time that they play it and they're like play
it as well as you can and there's another time where they're like focus on
what's new about this piece in this moment what are the nuances that are
just right now in this moment different from any other time that you've played
this and then a new group of people they listen to these recordings and you can
show in that data that people actually enjoy the version that was played with
this kind of mindfulness prompt versus just you know play it as well as
possible and you know there's some other nuances I think Ellen has shown in this
study and others that people who are performers they actually enjoy their
performance more when they're in this mindful state but I think that's the
take-home that is so interesting it makes me think of the difference between
a politician who's really good at giving a stump speech and one who's really not
good at it because you know if you're campaigning at a certain level you have
a speech or maybe a couple and you have to give it over and over and over and
over again and it can really sound like cardboard unless you are really good at
thinking about what you're trying to do which is communicate to this audience
right this stump speech which I've already given a hundred times yeah I
think it's great advice right I try to do this when I'm teaching and I think
it's good advice for conversation it's like I am here I am here hear me roar
and I guess you could argue this for like Broadway actors or maybe you can
even argue it for you Stephen like oh yet another interview with like yet
another social scientist can I say there is a difference though because it is a
different interview every time I mean yeah there's a sameness to it but
honestly one of the reasons I stopped playing music years and years ago is
because as much as I loved playing if you wrote a song with your band and you
got out and played it in a club or a little theater whatever as thrilling as
it was the first time and maybe the tenth time was even better by time 50
it's already hurting and imagine doing it times 500 so yeah I've thought about
this dilemma quite a bit so if you're in a conversation obviously you don't have
the challenge of it being the same exact conversation but I think this advice to
be so present so attuned to not your own thoughts as much as like your
audience your conversation partner I think it's a lot of charisma actually
yeah I agree with that and I like it a lot in fact one of the things I told
Sarah on this call was to consider the audience at your advice but one thing
that was particular about the circumstance of this conversation that
she's having let's say an interview with a golf journalist and again every
conversation is different right the participants are different the purpose
is different the context is different that just shows you how mindful you are
Steven just to notice the yeah and Langer would be proud drink up now are
we just saying Ellen Langer so people get more shots of schnapps but I did
encourage her to think about her audience so I think that when you're
being interviewed by let's say a TV journalist naturally you're thinking
about responding to that person they're the person sticking the microphone in
your face in fact who you're talking to are the million or whatever people that
are out there I said that here's the thing about everyone watching they all
love to play golf here's another thing about everybody watching most of them
are way worse than you so you have something that they want so what's a way
to treat that asset should you treat it as something that oh I'm tormented about
it I wish I were better I hope I can become pro actually I think that what
most people want to hear is what it's like to be that good not in a braggy way
but to focus on the fact that this is a really talented and really hard-working
person because that gives them an opportunity to get into that mindset and
honestly I think that's what they really want everybody wants to be better so in
a way she was considering herself kind of the young person in the room you know
the I don't quite belong in the same stage as these pros that may be talking
five minutes after me but as a matter of fact if you think about the audience and
not yourself and not the journalist with the microphone what you have is what a
lot of people really want and they want to hear about what it's like to have
that how do you think that advice works I am torn because on one hand yeah I do
think you're right to have some empathy with the audience and what they're
expecting and what they're gonna get out of this conversation and yet I don't know
I feel like the people that I like to listen to most are the ones where they're
just being honest it's like they're just you know having a feeling telling
what the feeling is having a thought telling you what the thought is and
there's not a lot of deliberate maneuvering I should say the other
message I gave her was to be basically as authentic as she could which was the
advice that you gave as well I guess I am trying to combine these two things
but I don't think they're contradictory I did tell her to show your intensity to
show your competitive spirit to show your goofiness whatever it is because a
lot of people do try to tamp down their real selves right their individuality
like who they really are yeah then they sound like robots and nobody likes that
okay how about this Venn diagram overlap I'm agreeing with you that there has to
be a sense of your audience or your conversation partner but also some
authenticity when I stand up in front of my students I want to be myself and at
the same time you're right it would be different for example if I were standing
up in front of like some big corporation sales gathering of 4,000
people it's a different vibe like who is my audience where are they what are they
looking for and what are you trying to accomplish to me that's the big question
we often don't quite ask ourselves I think this goes for any conversation or
any communication you have written or verbal I'll say I feel a lot of people
try to show how smart and awesome they are and I would argue that it's better
from the audience perspective to show how interesting or human or real you are
that would be my primary argument right I remember advice I got when Freakonomics
came out we started getting on TV a good bit and our publisher sent us to a media
consultant and the media consultant had some advice that I remember to this day
when you're talking whether it's in person with someone or on TV there is one thing
that if you do consistently people will listen to your message more willingly and more
approvingly can I guess yeah smile smile cuz I got the same advice we probably went
to the same media consultant Bill McGowan Bill McGowan yes literally so you and I've
been walking around smiling for the past 10 years he gave me the same exact advice
but it's so true and Bill McGowan is like the best here's another big Bill McGowan
point I'm curious if you remember this one instead of talking about theory and
explaining the why he wants you to tell a story he always wants you to tell a story
and he wants you to be specific and concrete and vivid and not get into these abstract
words that don't mean anything like you want a mental picture to be created in the eye
of the beholder this makes me want to hear from our listeners so if you have advice for
speaking well any secret tips and I would say do's and don'ts I would love you to send
us what you feel is useful advice or maybe cautionary tales just use your phone to make
a voice memo send it to NSQ at Freakonomics.com we would love to hear what you have to say
still to come on no stupid questions Stephen and Angela discuss how distress affects communication
holy schmally does every American with a problem suddenly become Shakespeare
now back to Stephen and Angela's conversation about how to become a better speaker so let's
me ask you this I think you're a really good communicator thanks whenever you speak you
deliver a lot of useful information interesting information but also your tone is appealing and
so on so if we were to consider you a successful communicator who have been your greatest
influences on your success whether it was something that you read on your own something
that people have taught you whether there was a role model for public speaking anything like that
so as you know when I dashed off my thumb typed reply I immediately thought like oh she wants to
know Sarah like how to get better at speaking she should ask herself who's her role model I guess if
I had to say like who is the best conversationalist or the best speaker I think it's Brock Obama you
know half of people think oh I hate Brock Obama because I don't agree with this politics but if
you could just for a moment consider his oratorical skills right like his ability to tell a story to be
warm to be so obviously in the moment with you I just think he has no parallel and when you say
he's a speaking role model would you say that you specifically patterned yourself after him you
know I thought to myself like oh what he's doing is he's being warm he's being present he's also
doing a lot of things that very effective communicators do which is he's using the
intonation of his voice he's using pauses he's using eye contact he's using his hands I mean
it's like a full-body thing to communicate I didn't say like I'm just gonna mimic Barack
Obama maybe I could sound like Barack Obama maybe my arm gestures you know but now that you mention
it you sound a lot like I think the ideal for me because I think I'd have to pick somebody who
would be closer to my gender for example and my maybe my age although Barack Obama's not that much
older than me I would say that and she's a lot older than me I think like Oprah Winfrey is a
great communicator is there such a thing as a negative role model like somebody that you
don't want to be yeah I think we've done a really good job of that for Sarah today Sarah
when you think about how to communicate to the public just listen to what Angie and Stephen did
and don't do that don't do that that's right I don't know what the word is for negative role
model but I will say this as a psychologist Stephen having an example of what not to do
has some utility it's helpful to have don'ts but it's almost always better to have do's because
in general when you say oh don't do it this way there's just so many things not to do
but it's not without its merit I want to sneak in one Bill McGowan story about what not to do
so grit is about to come out and I'm told not asked I'm told by the publisher that I have four
hours of training with Bill McGowan so I don't screw up all the morning show interviews and so
I meet with him I've never met with him before and I'm of course peppering him with questions
as the clock is ticking down for my four hours I was like oh what about this what about that how
do I sit do I put my shoulders back and I asked him like how do I drink water if I am lucky enough
to get on one of these morning shows wait wait wait wait you have four hours to talk about how
to speak well on TV and you're asking how to drink the water it only took 10 seconds to ask him
but I remember he showed me footage of like who was that presidential candidate was it Mark Rubio
Marco Rubio Marco Rubio but he was like here let's watch this YouTube video and we were watching
him drink water was he really good at it or really bad at it oh my gosh it was painful I think it was
like a nervous tick or maybe he had a dry throat but Bill said to me there's only one way to drink
water when you're on television and that is not to drink water so wait a minute you just got done
telling us that there are do's and don'ts but you should focus on the do's and not the don'ts
now you're telling us that one powerful takeaway was the don't yeah and this is nuanced even both
and I want to say this you probably if you had only one model to choose from would like me choose
a positive role model right like if you only had one YouTube video to watch to get better at speaking
better to watch Barack Obama than Marco Rubio or at least Marco Rubio drinking water it's possible
he's a fantastic public speaker I don't know I can't evaluate his other public speaking deals
but I will say I think don'ts have some value but do's have more I will share this I think the most
I ever learned about communication whether it's speaking or writing goes back to a course that I
taught not took although I wasn't really quite qualified to teach it but as you know when you
have to teach something you get really good at it in a hurry at least you try hard and this was a
