Modern Wisdom - #198 - Tim Harkness - An Expert's Guide To Mastering Difficult Conversations

Episode Date: July 18, 2020

Tim Harkness is a psychologist and an author. Our ability to communicate is crucial for happiness and social cohesion, yet it seems that the art of having a productive conversation has been lost. Expect to learn Tim's favourite rules for effective talking, the conversation archetypes, how to diagnose your own communication strategy, why metaphors are a dangerous tool, whether Donald Trump truly is a master communicator and much more... Sponsor: Shop Tailored Athlete’s full range at https://link.tailoredathlete.co.uk/modernwisdom (FREE shipping automatically applied at checkout) Extra Stuff: Buy 10 Rules For Talking - https://amzn.to/2ZARf5C Get my free Ultimate Life Hacks List to 10x your daily productivity → https://chriswillx.com/lifehacks/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://www.chriswillx.com/contact Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi friends, welcome back. My guest today is Tim Harkness, and we are speaking about a topic which seems to come up a lot at the moment, how to have good conversations. It's indicative of the time, right, that everyone is shouting and no one is listening. So hopefully today, Tim with his beautiful South African accent

is going to give you some tips on how you can be a better conversation list. Our ability to communicate is crucial for happiness and social cohesion, and yet it seems the art of having a productive conversation has been very, very lost, especially in 2020. So today, expect to learn Tim's favorite rules for effective talking, the conversation archetypes,

how to diagnose your own communication strategy, whether Donald Trump is truly a master communicator and much more. I also love people with South African accents, man. Like it's so good. Tim. Tim Hachness. I can't do South African very good, but he's great. He's great.

I changed my Siri to South African, to a South African lady, because that's how much I love the accent. So speaking to Tim for an hour was wonderful. In other news, this Thursday is episode 200, shit the bed. How the hell? 200 episodes has come around this quickly, blows my mind. But yeah, episode 200, we had tons and tons, literally hundreds of messages with questions that we went through myself, Johnny and you, Seth, also, we might be doing an in-person podcast soon. Well, I don't know. I don't know if recording or sat in a room together

is actually like a legal offense. So if anyone knows, if I'm allowed to do it, let me know. Or we might just accidentally break the law and see if we can get it done. But yeah, this Thursday, episode 200, really, really fun. Me, Johnny and you, so just riffing on a bunch of questions, people asked us about life and direct how dysfunction and b days and all of the other random stuff that we talk about. But for now, we're going to listen to Tim's wonderful, Tim. Tim Hackness.

and they'll listen to Tim's wonderful, Tim. Tim Hackness, I'm going to listen to his beautiful South African accent. An expert's guide to mastering difficult conversations has there ever been a more appropriate time to work out how to have difficult conversations than right now? You know, I wrote the book and just there's one line in the book that refers to the pandemic and it's the last revision that was refers to the pandemic. And it's the last, it's the last revision that was made to the manuscript. And I thought to myself, as the lockdown started, is the book relevant still? Because it just seemed that we had this all encompassing issue that we all needed to pay attention to. And then of

course, you know, the complexity of the lockdown emerged and then the Black Lives Matter protests began as well. And so, I think I thought to myself, actually, yes, you know, I think this notion and not even to make a claim for my book, but just to make a claim for talking, just to make a claim for communication. I think this is something that we need globally. And yeah, absolutely, it's been reinforced in the last couple of months. You had a little bit of divination, clairvoyant foresight, perhaps there about just how much it was needed. Wow. I mean, obviously, we've been dealing

with Brexit for years, you know, and I think people are being, there's this growing economic inequality that I think has been a concern for people. And that's just at the political level. And then at the personal level or the professional level, I mean, one of the things that the lockdown has thrown up has been what I read this book and it calls it domestic bargaining. And it's basically who does the vacuuming. But, you know, there's this whole kind of field of study around it. That's a body of work now. Oh, yes, yes, absolutely.

And, you know, the thing is, I mean, just think how much it affects all of us. Well, I don't know if it affects you, but it's... Me and my house mate have got every other Thursday, we get the Marigold yellow gloves on, and we throw the tunes on, and he does the bathroom in the living room, and I do the kitchen and downstairs,

and then it's done, and that's it once every two weeks. Okay, so you go for straight equality. That's your, it's like, absolutely. Quality of outcome, and a quality of outcome and equality of opportunity Yeah, equal access to the Hoover equal access to the Okay, yeah, so that's your method and that's what works is not everybody goes with that by the way You know that there's a more complex discussions Um that can emerge

I want to know if you're listening and you've got a very convoluted way that you and the people that you live with have Partitioned the housework throughout lockdown. I want you to tell me what the most complicated ways are that that's happened because this just sounds I found out My friends Girlfriend has a very complex way of keeping the house clean a girlfriend has a very complex way of keeping the house clean. Apparently there's a number of books that are all systematic programs of how you clean your house. It's like, if you took David Allen's

getting things done framework for productivity but applied it to housework. And it's so sophisticated. He's got it. Bro, I was just like, there's just an underworld that I totally didn't realize and I was just living in this different different place. Okay, so we've kind of got ourselves framed here that we do need to have conversations and I think at the moment it's precisely the things that

we need to talk about that we're struggling to talk about. We have quite a lot of performative communication going on at the moment. It's difficult to work out who the bad actors are and who the ones that are just saying something out of fear or signaling or any one of a number of different things. So high level, what is the purpose of communication and why do we need to learn how to talk? Yeah, well, you know, that rule one is agree what you're talking for. So, you know, that question, what is the purpose of communication?

We have different objectives, and we run into problems when two people each have their own agenda in a conversation. It's much easier when we both want the same thing. So, you know, just to list some objectives, one kind of conversation is a listening conversation. So I get home at the end of the day and I said to my partner, honey, how was your day? And that's a pure listening conversation because my partner knows about her day and I don't.

So that's kind of point number one is it's just about information transfer. On the other hand, if you're a dentist and I, you know, come and visit you, you've got the information I don't and I just want to listen. So that's one kind of conversation, but you can run into problems because the one problem could be I don't realize what I don't know. The second kind of problem is when my ego gets involved and you start telling me there's some kind of issue with my teeth and I go, well you're telling me I don't know how to look after my teeth. And then I stop listening because there's this kind of ego problem that's been invoked. So that's the one kind of conversation.

It's a listening conversation. You get another kind of conversation, which is an emotional conversation, where you and I meet up and you say to me, you know, how's it going? And I say, you know, I've been having a tough time. And I start to share my emotions with you. And an emotional conversation has all the characteristics of a listening conversation, but it's got one more. And that is that if we're having a listening conversation, at some point when I'm listening, I can go, okay, now I got it, I understand, which obviously you can't do an emotional conversation.

You know, there's no point. No, right, mate, you're a bit sad. I get it. I know. I know. That doesn't work. So, you know, that's another kind of conversation. There's a third kind of conversation, which is a values conversation, where we evaluate things. Was this a good football match or not? Is immigration genuinely a problem? Black lives matter.

That's a values conversation. It's a conversation about what is important to us. And then once you've had the values conversation, things start to get, again, you can add a level of complexity on top of that, and you can start to have a fairness conversation, which is what's fair. So even at the personal level, these are crucial conversations that we have.

Now, in your housework system, you've got to totally fair because you've got complete equality, which is you dedicate the same amount of effort and the same amount of time. And there are no problems there, so you've got to work it up. But not everybody uses equality as a basis for fairness. Some people use deserve, which is I had a really tough day. I deserve some time off. Once you start introducing that element or once you start introducing the elements of, because that could be deserved, I had a really tough day, you know, I had a very stressful meeting, only last a few minutes, but it was so stressful that I can't back you, you know, and, you know, I promised you that land has been used.

I'm going to try that next Thursday. Well, it's my turn. I just had this meeting, but he knows that I'm locked in the house, he knows that that is all just from me. Right. Well, you could have had a tough podcast, you know, you never know. Maybe the guy was no good. So that's another complicating element.

And a third complicating element is that sometimes fairness is about what we need. And, you know, this is where to be frank, some of the, some of the household bargaining arguments in what I'm supposed to say frank, some of the household bargaining arguments in, well, I'm supposed to say negotiations, negotiations in our house crop up, is that we may have different needs in terms of how clean we need the carpet to be. And so on that basis, if I don't need the carpet to be quite as clean as what my partner needs it to be, as clean as what my partner needs it to be, then why should we have equal effort in terms of achieving something that we don't equally need?

So, you know, and obviously, not to take anything away from these household bargaining conversations because they're important and we all have to do them. So this is a major issue. Tim, if the household bargaining people take error with this podcast, given the last 200 episodes that we've put out, we've had a porn star on here, we've had, you know, if that's the thing, the next people sit up and go, you know what it is, Chris had this South African fella,

and he was badmouthing the way that people organize the housekeeping. If that's any of that. We're too far. I'll be surprised. Yeah, you can talk about porn, but don't you fucking talk about the fact you mean? Well, you never know. I wouldn't be surprised. But having said that, then the same things apply to our professional conversations and

our political conversations, that in terms of something like immigration, what's fair? How do we distribute what people need compared to what people deserve compared to equality? Or in terms of distribution of wealth, everybody's talking about the one percent at the moment and how they're so much richer than they used to be or the fact that CEOs now can earn 200 times as much as a base level employer in their employee in their organization. So that's another kind of conversation, it's just a fairness conversation. And then another kind of conversation is a prediction conversation. And this is that you and I want the same thing, but we disagree

about the best course of action to achieve it. So to me in some ways, the Brexit conversation is a prediction conversation, because we all want the same thing. We all want a happy country. We all want people to have jobs. We all want community. You know, we all want healthy people and so on. But we've just got different ideas about what's gonna deliver that. And I think that the prediction kind of conversation is important to recognize because often we're not actually that different,

because we do actually want the same thing. It's more like a technical thing of, well, how do we achieve that? So, you know, there's some conversations and then the kind of master conversation, and this is the one that I really want to champion, is the conversation where we talk about talking. So you know, this is what you and I are doing now, we're having a conversation about conversations. And this is an important conversation, I think for everybody, when you get stuck in one of the previous five conversations,

you need to be able to bail out of that conversation, go, now hang on, wait, wait, wait, this isn't working, let's start talking about talking. Let's start talking about this conversation. And really, that's what the book is designed to do is kind of equip people with the skills to have that conversation where you're talking about talking.

Each of those different categories of conversation that you've just come up with there, they require a different mindset, a different skill set. Yeah, and that's actually just today, it's an article I've been working on, is which of the rules apply particularly to those different kinds of conversations. So, you know, some of the rules, so broadly, when you're talking, you need to be able to achieve two things. The one thing you need to be able to do is you need to be able to achieve safety. And that is that basically people feel respected. They feel that they are being respected and they feel that their needs are being respected. That's the one thing that's got to happen.

And if that doesn't happen, those conversations are not going to work as well. At all. The second thing that you've got to be able to achieve is that there's got to be some kind of journey towards the truth. There's got to be some kind of shared understanding of the world. And the conversation's got to be effective. And the skills that you use for each of those, now a conversation cannot be safe unless it's effective. You know, you and I can have all the respect we like for each other, and you know, we have in the world for each other. But if we see the world in completely different

ways, you know, if you think the world is round and I think the world is flat Unless we've made some sort of progress to getting closer to a shared understanding of the world We've been wasting our time and it's unlikely that we're going to be able to maintain full respect for each other Given that we've got such a kind of significantly different view of the world But at the same time we can't have an effective conversation unless it's a safe conversation. So we can't start bombing each other with facts and logic and arguments. And this we actually both feel respected and kind of honored by the other person. Yeah, it starts, it devolves into either a debate, which is the sort of formal version of

a conversation which you identify in the book or I guess a slanging match, which I don't know if that technically exists in the book. But a very real thing. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, that's the unspoken type of conversation that's not in there. Yeah, it's those two things. The effectiveness slash kind of the namaste one plus one equals three in this conversation, we both go away with more wisdom than we

came in with it. The effectiveness slash truth and the safety. Yes. I am seeing almost every conversation on the internet qualify neither of those of those characteristics like people are going out of their way to make conversations as unsafe as possible to try and show as a little respect you talk about the retort and the sound bite in the book as well and both of those are really fascinating the way that a a resort is a put down designed to almost interrupt the flow of a conversation. And that the one safety net that you used to have in a flowing conversation was that you needed to have a particular degree of spontaneous creativity in order to be able to do a zinger,

the old knee slapper in a debate, like you have to wear ours, now that a lot of our conversations are mediated by the internet, you got five minutes, you can ask your mate what he thinks. This guy just said that my podcast's shit, what can I call him bald? Calling bald, who yay, he's bald.

You know, like he's a good one. So you can kind of do this. And yet it seems like everything at the moment is gearing us as a society, as a community toward having worse types of conversations. And I really do feel so blessed to find long form conversations enjoyable because if I didn't, I worry, because I listen to consume a lot of content,

joy, and some Harris, special hero, et cetera, et cetera. If I didn't enjoy that, the only things that I would be consuming are like the 15 second days of your own story. You know, to me, hopefully for the listeners as well, these sorts of conversations are like, they're the tonics, you know, that are calming, they're the antidote to the venom in a way that people are seeing.

Look, yes, it's slower. Yes, it's more pedestrian. Yes, you have to do a little bit of work to actually get some of it. But that's the point. It's like a mental gymnasium for yourself, right? As opposed to it just being, look at this 280 character put down

that's filled with emojis and like has a gif attached to it. Like that's not, you understand what I mean? Like when that's the best priority of the time, the communication. That's very interesting. And what I mean? Like when that's the best way you're at your time, the communication. That's very interesting. And I hadn't thought of that. I hadn't thought of the difference between the long form

and the tweet or something like that. But yeah, that makes sense. I think being just being around that, a lot of the time, especially during lockdown, people maybe haven't had a lot of people to talk to. You know, maybe in on your own or live in with one of the person, you don't have tons of people to talk to. So, you know, I think I've talked more to podcast guests than I have to anybody else or in an equivalent

way, I've probably listened to Ben Shapiro more than I've listened to any other person. What does that do to our ability to understand how to communicate? Because really, there's not a whole lot of difference between me listening to Ben in my ears, you know, that's all I'm going around doing the housework. And a listening conversation where I don't ever speak. Yes. Yes. You know what I mean?

So what does that do to us and how does that, how can that be the antithesis to these short form stuff? I think that's... Yeah. And I really like that idea because I think sometimes we can solve problems by reasoning our way through them and other work other times we can solve problems just by exposing ourselves to different things. You know, and what you're saying is let's just expose ourselves to more long form.

And in that, we solve many of the problems that have emerged, because of the fast pace of life and technology and this intermittent communication, and written communication also, and I often think to myself, one of the stories that amazes me is being South African, one of the key events in South African history was the Anglo-Zulu war in 1879, and mainly the Battle of the Sun to One, and then what's famous in this country is the Battle of Raulkstrif. And in a previous generation, they used to show the movie, I think it was called Zulu, Every Christmas, which was the story of the battle. You know, this was just a tradition. Everybody had sit down and watched this movie again and again and again.

And the battle culminated in a series of negotiations and you had the British party who were literates, you know, came from the literate society. And the Zulu negotiations, the Zulian negotiations, the negotiators were illiterate, they had no writing. What they did have though was the ability to memorize the entire conversation from a single listening. So they would go along, they would listen to a five hour conversation and they'd go back to the king and they'd be able to recited word for word. And you know you've got this, so this is a society that at that point, and it's 150 years ago, had not been exposed to technology, but had developed this incredible spoken culture spoke in culture as a way of adapting for the technology, you know, that was letters and notes and, you know, shorthand and whatever else. And it is something I'm a little aware of.

I think having come from grown up in an African country is, I do think sometimes there's a tradition of conversation that is quite strong. There's still some echoes of that. I think so. And that's not to say it doesn't exist here. In pubs and areas where people here get together and just talk. And yeah, if podcasts and long-form communications are emerging as another environment, where people can do something that I think is natural to us, what really is better than just sitting and talking with other people? Man, I spend hundreds of hours every year doing it for sheer joy of it.

And I have a piece of advice to listen to. I'll know once a week, every week for 30 minutes at least, you need to sit down with a friend and have a conversation about something that both of you are interested in. You leave your phones outside of your room and you will leave that room feeling like you've just gone through therapy or a cool gym session or a disorder. There is something incredibly therapeutic about having a conversation where it's you and another person without distractions holding each other to intellectual rigor trying to be as precise as possible. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Right. Yeah. Oh hang on, you've just said this thing but two seconds ago you said

that thing. I don't think those two things quite marry up. Being genuine, you're interested in what the other person has to say. And so much of that stuff, you know, I didn't have a foresight for Tenerles for talking in your book, but there's a lot of that which marries up. And when you see someone who's done the research in the literature, when your experience of the world matches

what exists in the literature. It really reinforces it in a nice way. A lot of people listening want to have better conversations. What are the most common errors you see people looking when conversing? Well, I think the two ways are looking at that. The one way of looking at it is you can say what kinds of, what kind of, what's conversation styles do people have. So the one way you could break it down is you could say some people tend to escalate. So I think an example of this is someone like Piers Morgan. Now, you know, Piers, I agree with him strongly

on some issues and I disagree with him strongly on some issues as well. Which I think is. You never moderate on Piers are you? You're like, you never moderate, it's always this. Yes or no? Yes, but at least it's mixed. You know, at least I don't disagree with him

on everything and can't, or agree with him on everything. But as you say, you're not moderate and the reason why is that he's not moderate. He escalates. He makes a big deal out of things. And he tends to bring emotion into the topic. He sees the world in quite a black and white sort of way. And so I think that's an escalator. And escalators can be useful sometimes. If we're having a picnic and there's a beautiful sunset and butterflies flying around, in a way we want to be escalating this. We want to be going, wow, this is fantastic.

We're having a wonderful time. This is brilliant. On the other hand, if we're having a political argument or if me and a mate are sitting in a room having a conversation and I go, no, I don't think you've been consistent there. What I don't want to do is escalate because I've picked up that he's been inconsistent. I don't think I want to go, you know what, you're inconsistent, you're illogical, you're illogical because you lack intelligence and you lack intelligence because you have no education and you're not a good person a blah blah blah and that would be an escalation and you know it's it's something that we're all too prone to.

So that's you know that that's notion number one is the idea of escalation and and it can it can be a good thing but it can be inappropriate as well. There's a lot there that people need to step into their own programming with regards to their desire to want to win a conversation. Yeah, yeah. Because inevitably by making the other person look dumb, feel silly, embarrassed, to whatever it might be, it's like, guess, points for me. Like, that's Chris, one up on the pedestal and Jonathan, one down on the pedestal, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that comes back to rule

one, which is agree what you're talking for. And if I'm going into a conversation with the aim of winning the conversation or taking the other person down a pig, well, in some ways, fine, if that's your genuine objective, but I think the problem more likely is people don't realize that that's what they're pursuing. And it's not what they really want. So, absolutely, you know, I'm not looking to take, well, I think most of the time, it's not an explicit aim and it's not the best aim. It's when it creeps in. I think even if you asked someone, did you mean to have an adversarial conversation there where you made the other person feel silly? In retrospect,

or beforehand, no, but they just get caught up. The signaling, there's that girl over the far side looking or there's that person at the table who I want to look at the boss watching at the table and I want to look at boss is watching at the table and I want to look like I'm real capable or whatever it might be. Okay, so that was the first category. That's the last. Yes. Second category storytellers. So you get some people who communicate their view of the world through stories. And I think a great example of this is Boris Johnson, that he's got this real knack for metaphor. And he, you know, when he talks about the coronavirus as an invisible mugger, he says, we're going to send it packing. When he was critical of Theresa May's

Brexit negotiations by saying, there's a white flag fluttering as we walk into the meeting room. These are very vivid and plausible stories that he tells. And obviously sometimes stories are effective. As human beings, we relate to stories. And they're a good word persuading us sometimes. But then again, there's a limitation to them. And that they lack a real kind of level of precision and accuracy. So the problem with the story is that the story is not verifiable.

So I'm flying the white flag. Well, what on earth does that mean? How do we measure? How do you measure whether we flag there is? Is it slightly cream? That's the thing. There's just no word to tell. And when there's no word to tell,

we've limited our potential to agree. Because as you say, a conversation is about trying to find out the truth. It's trying to find out how the world really is. So what I should be doing in a conversation, well what we should be doing in a conversation is we're both trying to work out a fact about the world. I'm not trying to persuade you of my worldview and you're not trying to persuade me of your worldview. We're both trying to journey towards an improved understanding of how the world can be. And that's ultimately how we persuade

is by perceiving what is real. And storytellers compromise on that potential. And then, you know, just because PMQs is quite interesting at the moment, you've got what I would call an analyst. So you've got Kia Starma, who is quite strong on the rigour, on the facts, on the detail, on the precision. And he interacts with, so that you've got an

analyst interacting with a storyteller, and it kind of makes the quite good fireworks because you've got these two very different conversational approaches. Now, it does mean that they're really just scoring points of each other. The potential for genuine collaboration and the potential for actual agreement is fairly low because you've got two such different approaches. And I think we all kind of relate to analysts. If someone's building a bridge on aeroplane, I want an analyst. And to be talking to the Irish Johnson.

No, I don't want to story teller, you know, I don't want, well, these wings look fantastic, you know, they are going to lift you up on the wind. And I'm not wanting that kind of thing. I'm wanting the analyst. And to be perfectly honest, you know, when it comes to an economic policy, I'm wanting an analyst as well. But being an analyst is not enough because part of operating in a democracy is that we need to be bound together.

You know, we need to have a shared identity. We need to have some sense of a collective narrative that is meaningful and important for all of us. And that's where the storytellers come in is that they can be very good at doing that. So, you know, once again, I think the analyst is the definite strengths, but then it's not the only solution. It's not super persuasive either. The fact that Boris Johnson won the most recent general election by a landslide as a storyteller, what does that tell you? It tells you that people are much more persuaded by stories than they are by fact.

If fact or what persuaded most people, then the economists would run the world. It would just be the people that were able to macro this and the standard deviations actually inside the intercourse, I'll range in blah, blah. So it's not that. It's not about that. I love the idea of storytelling, increasing the in precision within the conversation, with as a tool, almost as a tool, right? And I like that thinking about in myself, sometimes I only just realizing it now,

use analogy as a way to escape being precise with what I'm saying. Because as you say, as soon as you use an analogy, the rules of the game are completely out the window. You're no longer talking about the situation. It's an analogous situation by definition. Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. That's a big one.

Checking yourself about, yes. Am I using this to enhance the conversation and add flair and sort of color? Yes. Or am I doing it to hide myself from or hide away from a deficiency in rigour and precision about how I'm actually putting this topic across those those are really really cool. and precision about how I'm actually putting this topic across. Those are really, really cool. So we got that. Can we try and help the people listening, self-diagnosed, the kind of conversationalists

that they are thinking, this sounds good, but I don't know. I'm a this person, I'm not that person. Yes, you know, I'd add one more, just to fill out the sit. So the full kinds of conversation. So we've got the storyteller, we've got the escalator, we've got the analyst, and one more is what I'd say

is the safety firster. And the safety firster is the person who's prepared to compromise on their own point of view or on their own needs in order to stop the conversation getting heated or breaking down. So there comes a point where you and I, we have having an argument, you say,

it's not gonna rain tomorrow, I said, it's gonna rain tomorrow, things get a little bit heated and I go, no, I think it's probably not gonna rain tomorrow, but I agree with you, that's okay. And I kind of bail, I think it's probably not going to rain tomorrow. I agree with you, you know, that that's OK. And I kind of bail out of the conversation. So I think those are the full kinds. And if I was an escalator, sort of red flags to look out for are, are the conversations, are we making mountains out of mold hills?

You know, am I reflecting on a conversation afterwards and thinking to myself, wasn't quite as much a big deal as it seemed at the time. To me, that would be a red flag and it's quite difficult to spot in the moment because these things can build quite quickly. So that would be a question I'd want to ask is, am I

getting more heated, more worked up than this issue really deserves? And yes, yes. Is this kind of where I end up in a conversation? And there Morgan does, is because Piers Morgan lacks the analytical ability. He's not great at proving things with facts. So he tries to prove things with emotion. And he just goes to the thing of, this is really important, this really matters, this is a moral issue. And that's how he tries to be persuasive.

And he is persuasive. You know, escalation is very, it's kind of compelling. Particularly, if you're a safety first and you don't like lots of emotion, then you're going to be inclined to sort of back down. So, you know, I think the one flag for an escalator would be, if you're looking back on a conversation, you go, wasn't quite as much of a big deal as it seemed at the time. I think for the storyteller, sometimes we can look back and think, what actually happened there?

What was that about? At the time it seemed convincing, white flags, and nobody likes white flags, that's got to be wrong. But as you say, then I look back and go, was it a bit cream and how big was it? I think those are storytellers, at the time it all seemed quite plausible. But then you look back and you think, it's almost like a dream. Then you get down to the brass tax of what was the number at the end of the conversation. Absolutely. What was the number?

Yeah, not for the foggiest. Yes, yes, yes. And then, you know, and to me, that would be the warning sign is, you know, we're all in agreement. And, and then it's like, well, no. And so that's the story teller. I think the reason that you're all in agreement is because you're kind of not really agreeing about anything.

You're agreeing about the other world that doesn't exist. But everyone's got this. Like, everyone's grandad, right, is a storyteller. Everyone's grandad will speak for 30 minutes. And he's like, yeah, grandad. But then when he finishes, you're like like what the fuck did he just say? That's the thing you know and and that's kind of the strength and the weakness of the story teller and and that would be the red flag is like you know what what was that all about? I think the

analyst is you get left with this feeling of you know that feeling when you haven't persuaded someone all the time yeah yes and and you know that feeling when you haven't persuaded someone. All the time, yeah. Yes. And you know, just as I said that, and you kind of, there was a bit of a delay and I was thinking, have I persuaded you? You know, there's this sort of awkward feeling like, and then I'm going, well, should I escalate this?

Should I start telling a story? What should I do, you know, when, because I think, there are only specific circumstances where numbers are persuasive. And, you know, and I'll follow this track a little bit. I was reading a book called The Righteous Mind by a writer called Jonathan Hate. And he says, scientists, even when they're wrong, are prepared to change their mind in a way that ordinary people are not. And he's got this paragraph where he reflects on the fact that it is very difficult to persuade ordinary people of a view that they hold strong. Where scientists, you know, some scientists have built entire careers on a theory, and they may get to a point where they've been working on this thing for 30 years, and eventually

there's this kind of incontrovertible argument, and they go, ah, wrong, you know, change my mind. The reason why that is possible is that scientists know the rules of talking. Scientists cannot break the rules of debate. Scientists cannot do things like cherry pick, they cannot ignore evidence, they cannot stick their heads in the sand and pretend that they haven't heard an argument, and they can't abandon the rules of logic. And when you are held to those rigorous processes, sometimes you're forced to change your mind, because you've either got the option of abandon reason or change your mind.

And scientists generally would rather change their mind than abandon reason and surrender their identity as scientists. Now normal people are not explicitly trained in the processes of reason, but we all see ourselves as reasonable people. We all, and the thing is logic is not that difficult. You know, amassing evidence is not actually that difficult, and we all kind of know how it works. It's just that we're not always good at applying it in particular situations. And what I have found is even when you're talking with ordinary people,

working as an analyst, you can pull people back into the conversation by saying, but you cannot deny that and be reasonable. You cannot ignore that piece of evidence and be reasonable. You cannot stick your head in the sand and ignore that argument and be reasonable. So you're always injecting this reminder to the person that they see themselves as reasonable and they are capable of reason. So that I think is the opportunity for the analyst to become more persuasive is when they're reminded of reason, but that is one of the red flags when you're relying on reason too much is you just go, you know that is one of the red flags when you relying on reason too much is

you just go, you know, I kind of said what I had to say, but I can see that this person was not moved by my, by my, I mean, if all that it took was facts and figures, then we could just email everyone a spreadsheet and not bother to have the conversation. Maybe that is just, it's just there. I think another problem that people have is, again, the rules of the game are so messy. And because you have, like in UFC, you got the Brazilian jujitsu guy and then you got the kickboxer

and you got the wrestler and blah, blah. Because the rules of the game for talking are so messy, not like science. In science, there's quite sharp bright lines around, this is right, this is wrong, this is statistically significant, this is and there's correlation, there's not correlation. You don't have those objective metrics. You know, you you picked a great example there, basically mixed martial arts and no rules fighting. So, you know, I'm a sports psychologist and about, wow, this is about 15 years ago,

I worked with the South African lightweight mixed martial artist and the champion. And at the same time, I was working with the all-Africa judo heavyweight champion. This guy had not been beaten in five years. He weighed 120 kilograms. He was just like this awesome human being. But then I moved into the world of MMA.

So judo obviously is very strictly, you know, very strictly rule based and governs. And then MMA at the time was a bit of a wild west. You know, the UFC had, I don't think had emerged short, at least it wasn't a big deal. And this guy used to win fights by breaking people's arms. You know, that was just his technique.

He just like snapped someone's arm and then, you know, the fight was over. Yeah. And I used to go to his dojo sometimes and there were two characters that I remember. The one was this butcher who weighed honestly, this guy weighed 130 kilograms of lean, lean muscle. Steroided out to the max. This is one of the most terrifying human beings I've ever met in my life. Now I mean just consider the fact that he's probably got roared rage like just melting

his brain. He's got all of these martial arts skills and the Galways are 130 kilograms, you know. I mean, this is just a terrible idea. If he wants you, you're his. That's it. I didn't even use to look at it. I just used to stay away. Safeest strategy. Yeah. Yeah. And the other one was a car a tractor who was a kind of middleweight and he was the coach and he was describing, I remember the one time, he was describing how you pin someone down on his stomach on the floor and you start to punch him in the back of the head. And obviously in UFC, that rule is now, you can't do that anymore.

And that has been one of the interesting things, even in mixed martial arts, has been how much more clear the rules have become over generation. And if you go and watch UFC1, where they've got Gracie and Sumo wrestlers and Karate guys, UFC1 is a guy who he knocks over a Sumo wrestler and he just kicks him in the head. That's a two thin to roll. That's a rough, isn't he? Well, the one tooth goes into row. If the other one gets embedded in his foot, and, you know, it's kind of wild, but because they're no rules, and actually modern UFC is quite rule-guvent. You know, they're quite specific rules and the riffs are quite quick to jump in and people know what those rules are. And this really is

my argument for talking. Is that talking has become lawless. But I believe it would be improved, it would become more effective and it would become safer if we can apply some rules to it. And that's not impossible, because as human beings, we're generally quite good at applying rules to complex processes. Take football. You're gonna need to have a lot of work done in people's system too, for them to slow everything down

and begin credibly deliberate for a long time, because a deliberate conversation is enjoyable to a point, but can become a bit arduous after a while. Like when you're consciously thinking about everything you say, there's some herorcism that he where he says that life is a dream where you're constrained by the reality outside of you in terms of how your brain perceives it. In that, you don't know what's going to happen next. I don't know the words that are going to come out of my mouth until I say them. And that's a very bizarre situation to be in when you actually think about it. I don't know the next words that I got at this sentence, and then this sentence, and then

this sentence. I don't know how many of those this sentence is I'm going to say. If you're incredibly deliberate, you can choose to do that. And then the point is to use your planning, the planning you to instantiate these new habits, and then over time, hope that system one starts to pick that up and it just occurs as a byproduct of now, right? You don't consciously have to create your personality, it just occurs as a byproduct of you existing, right? Just manifests. But it'll take a lot of effort and humans evolutionarily are heritages to avoid effortful tasks. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The path of least resistance is always going to be there. If you play the fairer game, if I play the, I'm going to be real rigorous, and I'm going to be this that I'm new to her, and then you start throwing white flags at me. I'm at, well, what am I doing? Like, I'm losing a conversation that I was trying to, you know, there's so many different messy things.

I agree that it would make for a much more enjoyable conversational architecture that we could all exist in, but it requires an awful, we can't get people to have consensus about tons of stuff. We're getting them to have consensus about the foundational presuppositions that occur before we have a conversation. May also be challenging. Absolutely. I completely agree. The point you're making about switching between system one and system two, that's real full, talk fast and slow. So much of the talking that we do, you and I now, there's quite a lot of fast talking

going on between the two of us. We're not planning, as you say, we're not planning what it is that we're going to say. We're kind of hearing the words come out of our mouths. And that's a great way to talk. Imagine if we both just reading pieces of paper at each other, that would be terrible. We would have lost something.

But their times, when I need to be able to jump in and, and error check, and that's the role of system two, is to every now and go, now, where will I wait, hang on, stop, and, and it's not a lot of the time, but if I can do it some of the time then I've made an improvement Um, and you know, I remember I didn't actually put this one in the book, but the one time I used to have this old perjot 307 and um Quality card was it in that good metal gray? No darker darker Yeah Was it a diesel? No, it wasn't. It was petrol.

It was a three-door petrol. We used to have to get three kids in the back. And it wasn't running so well. And we were going to visit friends and my wife said to me, it's just take the bus. You know, the car's not working well. And I went, that's going to be fine. You know, there's going to be no problem.

And we drove to the friend's house house and then we couldn't find parking. So we drove about 100 meters past the friends house. And at that exact point, we could not be any further from home that broke down. And my wife turned to me and she went, we should have taken the bus. And I remember, I can't remember the name of the movie. I think it's called Red October, it's a submarine movie. The time when the submarine, everything's going bad. They're red lights and people are running around and the sirens going off.

I was thinking, I'm in that movie. There are sirens going off. There's red. There's just bad stuff going on. I mean, she was right, obviously. But that was a moment where, I think, looking back, had I been able to slow things down and get a bit of system, and I think it was such a vivid sort of example,

and I was so clearly in the wrong that I think it was a nice example to be able to look back on and go, well, there's a situation where slowing things down could have been good. But to come to your next point, which I think is also a critical point, and that is that this is hard. System 2 is harder than System 1. And as human beings, we seek efficiency. It's not like any of us have got masses of time in the day that we can spend having these

painstaking, deliberate, rigorous logical arguments. But what I would say to that is that all of these arguments that we have just about, is like, do you think the Brexit argument was fast-talking? We took three years and we still haven't solved that. We went round and round and round. This whole lockdown thing, I'm not seeing as progressing rapidly towards solutions, using the fast-talking idea. Even the housework, you know how long my household has been discussing the dishwasher

for. So don't underestimate how long and how energy-sepping these repetitive conversations can be. And sometimes it actually takes less energy to invoke system two, talk slowly and rigorously, and hopefully make some actual progress. For the mental model fans out there, that is direction over speed in Carnot for you. If you are moving in precisely the correct direction, it doesn't matter how fast or how slow you know that you are making small amounts of progress every single day. Whereas, if you focus on speed as opposed to direction, which is the equivalent

of efficiency over effectiveness, if you focus on speed, you can be going at a hundred miles an hour in exactly the wrong direction and then turn around and go, ah, shit, I've done all of this work. And actually, my goal is now further away from me. And that manifests itself in people who embed bad habits that they think, I'm going to work real, real hard at doing this thing. And they end up having to then undo all of this mile in that they've wrapped around a ton of bad pathways, that rid of that, and then start again. But yeah, direction of a speed

for the people listening that love mental models. So who do you think is the best communicator or some of the best communicators that have ever lived? communicate or are some of the best communicators that have ever lived? Well, you know, I'm biased. I'm South African, Nelson Mandela. How do you know that you're going to say that? I mean, he's all right. He's good. Yeah, yeah, I just think, I just think for a lot of reasons, I think in terms of his ability to reach out, I think in terms of his ability to tell stories, he was an orator, and then just things like his body language, his tone of voice, his facial expressions.

But I also think in terms of his, and you know, rule three is most people are good, competent, and worthy of respect. And I think if there's one thing that I've kind of learned, or not necessarily learned, but just accepted in this whole journey, which has taken me years, it's possibly been rule three. Most people are good competence and worthy of respect. And what that means is that when we disagree, I don't have the easy solution that the reason why we disagree is because you just don't know stuff. You know, our disagreement is rooted in your ignorance or your incompetence. I've got to find it a more complex explanation, but a better explanation for why you and I disagree. And I think in terms of Nelson Mandela,

I think he really understood that. He was able to take a national tragedy that had lasted for centuries that had lasted for centuries and not locate the cause of it in the moral failings or the badness of a group of people and he was able to see the good in everybody in the country and I think that is what enabled him to speak so persuasively and and powerfully. So, you know, that's me as a South African and you know, and that's me kind of coming of age in the time that he was really talking to the country. I think, you know, I mean, the other obvious answer would be Winston Churchill. Winston Churchill is known for, we'll fight them on the beaches, and that's wonderful

story-telling. But I've spent some time reading through his speeches in detail and there's actually quite a precise logic that he's applying. And the other thing that he applies is that he links calls and effects that he's not just saying, it's all going to be fine. We're going to win. He's talking about things like ultimate sacrifice. If we all do our jobs, if we all apply ourselves, then the process

will deliver a result. So is that the analyst seeping in a little bit there? That's it. Yes. So while he is a wonderful storyteller, he's actually got this analytical understanding of the world and this understanding of how processes lead to outcomes. And you know, for me, that's what makes him a compelling communicator as well. He worked incredibly hard at it. I was listening to really Ryan Holidays most recent book,

not ego is the enemy. Stillness is the key. And he talks a lot, he delves into figures from history and Churchill is one of them. And fuck me, man. Like, Churchill did some graph. Like, he wrote, he wrote like 40 books and he had this unbelievable routine at this walking and writing and painting routine where he did, he was like, you know, for someone that was, and then after the war, he was kind of then just sort of left to one side,

and then he kind of forgotten about in a bizarre sort of way, which I don't think many people know. And I found that, he was a absolutely fascinating individual. And if anyone that's listening has a good biography of his that they could suggest, I'd love to get stuck into that. Trump, is he as much of a master communicator as people say?

You know, he's obviously fits in the story telekate degree. So, you know, nobody would accuse him of being an analyst. That's the nicest put down I've ever heard. No one would accuse you of being an analyst. No one's ever said to you, Donald, that you're too precise. Yes, yes. Yeah. And no one would accuse him of being a safety firster either. You know, he doesn't shy away from that.

And the opposite, if anything, he's like the anti-fragile safety first, where he takes his feet in even harder. Oh, yeah, yeah, and that's the escalation. You know, he just ramps it up. Every time he just goes up and up and up. So you've got this, you've got the storyteller and an escalator. And he's extremely good at that. I think the question have to ask if you to be critical of him, is how complex are the stories that he's telling? Are these good stories? Are these stories that have a desired effect?

Because what is he telling these stories for? And if you look at where the US has gone in the three and a half years of his presidency, I think in terms of, you could say, standing in the world, the US does not have the same standing in the world that it used to have. And part of that is, now, you know, he didn't sort of, didn't start this pandemic. But I think that would be one hell of a conspiracy. Maybe we should have a good. Excuse me, Donald, that's just those antibodies, mate. That's it. Yeah. You know, but I think it's fair to say that the US response has not been widely admired. And in terms of applying things like regular or mythology or consistent

approach or things like adequate risk, you could say that there been gaps in the way that he's led the country. So I think in terms of the stories that he's telling, some of the stories are not actually the best stories that you can tell. If you would have taken Winston Churchill, for example, if you would have taken Nelson Mandela, they'll also storytell us, but they're telling different stories.

They're telling stories about striving for something, about unity, about developing a national identity. He doesn't tell those stories. He tells stories of fear and division and selfishness. And those are kind of easy stories to tell because we've all got switches that are easily tripped. The lowest hanging fruit, right? The lowest common denominator.

Yeah, yeah. So, you know, he tells powerful stories, but in a way they're easy stories to tell. And so, you know, and the other thing I would say is, he hasn't won a second election yet. You know, he won one, and he won it with the lowest margin that, you know, anybody's ever won an election. Thousands votes, yeah. Yeah, yeah, in what was about the three states or something.

Let's see how he gets on this time, because I think the real measure of how effective he's been as a storyteller will only emerge. As we were saying, sometimes you can only evaluate the story once it's been told. And, you know, he's not quite finished. I don't know whether it's that the US coughs and the UK catches a cold or whatever it is. Man, the caliber of, or maybe this is my disposition of taking more notice of what's been going on in politics, just because I've been listening a little bit more. But my trust in what politicians say and what the media says, my view of the delivery of the things that they say, there's levels of distrust that I've got that need to be worked through here. And I wonder how much of that is the me being precluded from ever trusting

Trump because of what other people say about him. But even this, I need to strip away the bad conversations from people that aren't him to then look at the bad conversations that he is having, do you know, like it is difficult and if there's one thing I think that we can take away from this, our conversation today, which hopefully has been at least in part precise and easy to understand, is that conversations are challenging and they require work. And I think because we just develop language as a byproduct of being a kid, then we learn some words in school and then we just think that we're gonna be able to get through the rest of our life whilst you're not working

at it. You know, driving a car has a lower and upper bound, it has a lower bound on how bad you can be. The lower bound is, do you cause road traffic accidents? The upper bound is essentially kind of, once you're above that, it kind of doesn't matter. Let it matter if you're Colin McCray or fucking Michael Schumacher.

Like if you go into the local shops, it makes no difference. However, there's gradations of usefulness and your value, I would argue, probably is exponential, not logarithmic. It actually goes like this. And as you become, as you're the top 5% in the world, to the top 2% in the world, to the top half a percent in the world, having conversations and at being able to say the things that are inside of your head and articulate your words, your competitive advantage, your ability to enact change, to convince others, to be a force for hopefully good in this world. Yeah.

It is so much further ahead. The difference between Joe Rogan as a podcaster and the next best podcaster is everything. The difference between me now and me two and a half years ago when I started this show is everything. Okay. It is Universes apart in the way that I've still got to turn to ways to go, but Like I think that's a nice way to look at it that people should be Working to be rigorous. We've used the word rigor a lot. And I think that's a really cool way to sort of talk about to be rigorous. We've used the word rigor a lot. And I think that's a really cool way to sort of talk about conversations that you should be precise. You should be rigorous

with what you say. You should try and strive to be the best conversationalist that you can because that's how you compound wisdom, right? That's how everything gets built up. Yes, yes. And as you say, it's worth it if it. Hopefully some people are going to go away from this and be better conversation list. If they want to pick up 10 rules for talking, it will be linked in the show notes below. Feel free to follow that link onto Amazon and grab it on there.

Also, you'll be supporting this podcast at Nox for cost to yourself. Any other stuff that you want to plug to many of the stuff people should go and check out? No, I'll leave it a bit. That's hate. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, you kind of put me on the spot there. Are you on Twitter, Instagram, website, blog, any of that stuff? Twitter, Tim Harkness, Tim.

Yeah, welcome. Yeah, welcome to check that out. But mainly, I think I spend a lot of time working on that book. So those are my ideas in there. And that's sort of me at the moment. Hey, if this is a manifestation of you, I think it's a good use of your time, mate. And yeah, that's a linked in the show notes below. Go and check it out.

If you want to have better conversations, I think we all could do with a little bit of that. Probably as well, a lot of people that listen to this are kind of fledgling podcasters. I think there's a lot of stuff in there that I've stumbled upon during the time that I've just spent talking to people. And again, when you read something that reflects reality, do you usually put a good indication that it reinforces what they're saying, it reinforces what you're saying?

As a rule of thumb, yeah. Kind of tells you you're getting the As a rule of thumb, yeah. Kind of tells you you're getting in the right direction. For sure, yeah. So, again, if you want to expedite some of your ability to have conversations with people, and grab this. Tim, thank you so much, man. No, well, thank you, yeah. And enjoyed our conversation.

So, thanks a lot. Offends, get offends