An Expert's Guide To Mastering Difficult Conversations | Tim Harkness | Modern Wisdom Podcast 198

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 #communication #talking #conversationskills - Listen to all episodes online. Search "Modern Wisdom" on any Podcast App or click here: iTunes: https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/modern-wisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: [email protected]

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  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're 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, this conversation is not going to work as well at all.

• 0:21Chris Williamson?

  I'm joined by Tim Harkness. Tim, welcome to the show.

• 0:24Speaker 00

  Thank you very much, Chris. Nice to be here.

• 0:26Chris Williamson?

  Pleasure to have you here. 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?

• 0:38Speaker 00

  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, 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 protest began as well. And suddenly I thought to myself, actually, yes, you know, I think this notion and, and, you know, not even to make a claim for my book, but just to make a claim for talking,

• 1:23Speaker 00

  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.

• 1:32Chris Williamson?

  You, you had a little bit of divination, clairvoyant foresight perhaps there about just how much it was needed.

• 1:39Speaker 00

  Wow, you know, I mean, obviously, we've been dealing with Brexit for years, you know, and, and I think people have been, there's this growing economic inequality that I think has been a concern for people. And, and that's just at the political level, you know, and then at the, 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.

• 2:12Speaker 00

  There's this whole kind of

• 2:16Speaker 00

  field of study around it.

• 2:18Chris Williamson?

  That's a body of work now.

• 2:19Speaker 00

  Oh, yes, yes, absolutely. And, 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

• 2:27Chris Williamson?

  Me and my housemate, me and my housemate have got every other Thursday. We get the marigold yellow gloves on and we throw the tunes on and he does, he does the bathroom and the living room and I do the, I do the kitchen and downstairs and then it's done and that's it once every two weeks.

• 2:44Speaker 00

  Okay. So you go for straight equality. That, that, that's your, it's like absolutely.

• 2:48Chris Williamson?

  Quality of outcome and equality of opportunity. Yeah. Equal access to the Hoover, equal access to the, to the.

• 2:54Speaker 00

  Okay. Yeah. So, so that's your method and that's what works. Yes. Not everybody goes with that, by the way, you know, there, there's some more complex discussions. That, that can emerge.

• 3:05Chris Williamson?

  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. Cause this just sounds, I found out.

• 3:22Chris Williamson?

  My friend's girlfriend has a very complex way of keeping the house clean. Apparently there's, there's a number of books that are all systematic programs of how you clean your house. It's like the, if you took David Allen's Getting Things Done framework for productivity, but applied it to housework. And it's, it's so sophisticated. Bro, I was just like, there's, 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, we've kind of got ourselves framed here that we do need to have conversations. And I think at the moment

• 4:01Chris Williamson?

  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.

• 4:15Chris Williamson?

  Fear or signaling or any one of a number of different things.

• 4:20Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 4:20Chris Williamson?

  So, high, high level, what is the purpose of communication? And why do we need to learn how to talk?

• 4:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, you know, that's rule one is agree what you're talking for. So, you know, that, that question, what is the purpose of communication? We, 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, you know, I, I get home at the end of the day and, 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, you know, that, that's kind of point number one is it's just about information transfer.

• 5:10Speaker 00

  On the other hand, if, 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, 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, that's been invoked. So that's the one kind of conversations, a listening conversation. And you get another kind of conversation, which is an emotional conversation. Where, uh, you know, you and I meet up and, and you say to me, you know, how's it going?

• 5:54Speaker 00

  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, no, I got it. I understand. Which obviously you can't do in an emotional conversation, you know, there's no point.

• 6:18Chris Williamson?

  All right, mate, you're a bit sad. I get it, I get it.

• 6:22Speaker 00

  I know, I know.

• 6:25Speaker 00

  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? You know, 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

• 7:10Speaker 00

  conversations that we have. Now, you know, in your housework system, you've got a totally fair, because you've got complete equality, you know, 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 it worked out. 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 element of, because that could be deserve, I had a really tough day, you know, I had a very stressful meeting, only lasted for thirty minutes, but it was so stressful that I can't vacuum, you know,

• 7:54Speaker 00

  and, you know, I promise you that line has been used.

• 7:57Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I'm gonna try that next Thursday, when it's my turn. Man, I just had this meeting. But he knows that I'm locked in the house. He knows that that's bullshit from me, yeah.

• 8:07Speaker 00

  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 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

• 8:48Speaker 00

  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, and, and I mean, obviously, and 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.

• 9:05Chris Williamson?

  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 that makes people sit up and go, you know, do you know what it is? Chris had this South African fellow and he was bad mouthing the way that people organise the housekeeping. If that's

• 9:27Speaker 00

  Went too far.

• 9:29Chris Williamson?

  I'll be surprised. Yeah. You can talk about porn, but don't you fucking talk about the vacuuming.

• 9:33Speaker 00

  Well, you never know, you know, I wouldn't be surprised. But, but, you know, having said that, then these same things apply to our professional conversations and our political conversations. That in terms of something like immigration, what's fair? And how do we distribute what people need compared to what people deserve compared to equality? Or in terms of, you know, distribution of wealth, you know, everybody's talking about the 1% at the moment and how they're, you know, 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 and their,

• 10:13Speaker 00

  in their employee in their organisation. So, you know, that's another kind of conversation is 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 going to deliver that. And I think that the prediction kind of conversation, it's important to recognize because

• 10:58Speaker 00

  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.

• 11:19Speaker 00

  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 going, 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.

• 11:50Chris Williamson?

  Each of those different categories of conversation that you've just come up with there, do they require a different mindset, a different skill set?

• 12:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, and, and, you know, that, 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?

• 12:12Speaker 00

  So, you know, some of the rules, so broadly, when, 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're being respected and they feel that their needs are being respected.

• 12:31Speaker 00

  That's the one thing that's got to happen. And if that doesn't happen, this conversation is 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

• 12:43Speaker 00

  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.

• 13:24Speaker 00

  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, you know,

• 13:36Speaker 00

  arguments unless we actually both feel respected and, you know, kind of honored by the other person.

• 13:43Chris Williamson?

  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 slangy match, which I don't know if that technically exists in the book. But yeah.

• 13:58Speaker 00

  But a very real thing.

• 13:59Chris Williamson?

  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.

• 14:21Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 14:21Chris Williamson?

  I am seeing.

• 14:24Chris Williamson?

  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 little respect. You you talk about the retort and the soundbite in the book as well. And both of those are really fascinating, the way that a retort 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

• 15:04Chris Williamson?

  a particular degree of spontaneous creativity in order to be able to do a, you know, a zinger. The knee, the old knee slapper in a debate like you have to, whereas now that a lot of our conversations are mediated by the internet. You've got five minutes. You can ask your mate what he thinks. This guy, this guy just said that that my podcast's shit. What can I, what can I call it? I'll call him bald, call him bald. Yeah, he's bald, you know, like. That's a good one. Yeah. So you can kind of do this. And yeah, it seems like everything at the moment is gearing us as a society, as a community, toward having worse types of conversations.

• 15:46Chris Williamson?

  And I really do feel so blessed to find long form conversations enjoyable. Because if I didn't, I worry because I listen to, I consume a lot of content, Joe Rogan, Sam Harris, Ben Shapiro, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. If I didn't enjoy that, the only things that I would be consuming are like the 15 second Instagram story that, you know, there is to me, hopefully for the listeners as well, these sorts of conversations are like they're the tonics. You know, that are calming, that 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

• 16:29Chris Williamson?

  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 majority of the time, the communication.

• 16:48Speaker 00

  That's very interesting. And I hadn't thought of that, you know, I hadn't thought of the difference between the long form and the, you know, the tweet or something like that. But yeah, that makes sense.

• 17:00Chris Williamson?

  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're maybe living on your own or living with one other person. You don't have tons of people to talk to. So, you know, I think I've, 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. And what, what does that do to our ability to understand how to communicate, right? Because really, there's no, there's not a whole lot of difference between me listening to Ben in my ears, you know, that's all I'm going

• 17:42Chris Williamson?

  around doing, housework, doing whatever. And a listening conversation where I don't ever speak.

• 17:50Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 17:50Chris Williamson?

  You know what I mean? So what does that do to us? And how does that, how can that be the antithesis to, to this short form stuff? I think that's.

• 17:59Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, you know, I really like that idea because I think, you know, I think sometimes we can solve problems by reasoning our way through them. And other way, 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.

• 18:27Speaker 00

  You know, because of the fast pace of life and technology and, and, you know, this intermittent communication and written communication also, you know, where it's, and, and I often think to myself, you know, one of, one of the stories that amazes me is, you know, being South African.

• 18:47Speaker 00

  One of, one of the key events in South African history was the Anglo-Zulu War in eighteen seventy nine. And mainly the Battle of Asundu one, and then what's famous in this country is the Battle of Rauksdrift. And, you know, in, 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 of, you know, this was just a tradition. Everybody would sit down and watch this movie again and again and again. And the, um, the, the battle culminated in a series of negotiations. And you had the British parties who were literate, you know, came from a literate society. And the Zulu negotiators were illiterate, they, they had no writing.

• 19:33Speaker 00

  What they did have though was the ability to memorize the entire conversation from a single listening.

• 19:41Speaker 00

  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 recite it word for word. And, you know, you've got this, so this is a society that, that at that point, and it's a hundred and fifty years ago, had not been exposed to technology, but had developed this incredible spoken culture as a way of adapting for the technology, you know, that was letters and notes and, 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

• 20:25Speaker 00

  There's a, there's a tradition of conversation that, that is quite strong.

• 20:33Chris Williamson?

  There's still some echoes of that.

• 20:36Speaker 00

  I, I think so, you know, and, and that's not to say it doesn't exist, yeah, you know, in pubs and, and areas where people here get together and just talk. You know, and yeah, if, if podcasts and long form communications are emerging as another environment where people can do something that I think is natural to us. You know, what, what really is better than just sitting and talking with other people?

• 21:03Chris Williamson?

  Man, it's, I spend hundreds of hours every year doing it for sheer joy of, of it. And I have a, a piece of advice, the listeners will 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 sauna.

• 21:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:30Chris Williamson?

  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.

• 21:41Speaker 00

  Okay, yeah, yeah, right, yeah.

• 21:44Chris Williamson?

  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 genuinely interested in what the other person has to say. And so much of that stuff, you know, I didn't have a foresight for 10 rules for talking, your new 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, the literature, it kind of, it really reinforces it in a nice way.

• 22:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:14Chris Williamson?

  A lot of people listening want to have better conversations. What are the most common errors? You see people making when conversing?

• 22:23Speaker 00

  Well, I think, I think you, there are two ways of looking at that. The one way of looking at it is you can say, what kinds of, what kinds 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, 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, on some issues as well.

• 22:54Chris Williamson?

  You're never moderate on Piers, are you? You're never moderate, it's always like, yes or no.

• 23:00Speaker 00

  Yes, but at least it's mixed, you know, at least I don't disagree with him on everything and, 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, and he tends to bring emotion into the, into the topic. He sees the world in quite a black and white sort of way. And, so, I, I think that's, that's an escalator. And escalators can be useful sometimes. You know, if, if we're having a picnic and, you know, there's a beautiful sunset and there, you know, butterflies flying around, in a way, we want to be escalating this. We want to be going, wow, this is fantastic, you know, we're having a wonderful time, this is brilliant.

• 23:44Speaker 00

  On the other hand, if we're having a, a political argument, or if, you know, we, if me and a mate are sitting in a room having a conversation, and I go, no, I, 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 then 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 and blah, blah, blah. And that would be an escalation. And, you know, it's, it's something that...

• 24:17Speaker 00

  We're all too prone to. So that's, you know, 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.

• 24:27Chris Williamson?

  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.

• 24:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 24:36Chris Williamson?

  Because inevitably by making the other person look dumb, feel silly, embarrassed, whatever it might be. It's like, yes, point for me. Like, that's Chris one up on the pedestal and Jonathan one down on the pedestal, you know?

• 24:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, that, 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 peg.

• 25:06Speaker 00

  Well, in some ways, fine, if that's your genuine objective. But I, I think that the problem more likely is people don't realise that that's what they're pursuing and it's not what they really want.

• 25:18Speaker 00

  So absolutely, you know, I'm, I'm not looking to take, well.

• 25:23Speaker 00

  I think most of the time it's not an explicit aim and it, and it's not the best aim.

• 25:27Chris Williamson?

  It's when it, it's when it creeps in. I think even if you asked someone.

• 25:30Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 25:30Chris Williamson?

  Did you mean to have an adversarial conversation there where you made the other person feel silly in retrospect or beforehand?

• 25:37Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 25:38Chris Williamson?

  But they just get caught up. The signalling, there's that girl over the far side looking or there's that person at the table who I want to. The boss is watching at the table and I want to look like I'm real capable or whatever it might be.

• 25:51Speaker 00

  That's it.

• 25:52Chris Williamson?

  Okay. So that was the first category escalation.

• 25:55Speaker 00

  Yes. Second category storytellers. So you, you get some people who, um, 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, um, 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, um, Theresa May's Brexit negotiations by saying there's a white flag fluttering. As we walk into the meeting room, you know, these are very vivid, um, uh, and, and plausible stories that he tells.

• 26:36Speaker 00

  And obviously, sometimes stories are effective. You know, as human beings, we relate to stories and and they're a good way of persuading us sometimes. But then again, there's a there's a limitation to them in that they lack a real kind of level of precision and accuracy. So the the problem with a story is that a story is not verifiable. You know, just so I'm I'm flying the white flag. Well, what on earth does that mean? You know, how how would we measure? You know, how do you measure whether How much flag there is? Is it white? Is it slightly cream? Yeah, that that's the thing, you know, there's just no way to tell. And when there's no way to tell, we've limited our potential to agree.

• 27:20Speaker 00

  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.

• 27:59Speaker 00

  And then, you know, just because PMQs is quite interesting at the moment, you've got what what I would call an analyst. So you've got Kier Starmer, who is quite strong on the rigor, on the facts, on the detail, on the precision. And and he interacts with so that you've got an analyst interacting with a storyteller. And it kind of makes for quite good fireworks because you've got these two very different conversational approaches. Now, it does mean That they're really just scoring points off each other, you know, the potential for genuine collaboration and the potential for actual agreement is fairly low because, you know, you've got two such different approaches and, and, you know, I, I think we all kind

• 28:40Speaker 00

  of relate to analysts, you know, if someone's building a bridge or an aeroplane, I want an analyst and, you know, to be perfectly honest.

• 28:47Chris Williamson?

  Boris Johnson.

• 28:48Speaker 00

  No, I, I don't want a storyteller, you know, I, I don't want, well, these wings look fantastic, you know, they, they are gonna lift you up on the wind, you know, I, 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, some sense of a, 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, it's not the only solution.

• 29:32Chris Williamson?

  It's not super persuasive either, is it? You know, 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 facts. If, if facts were what persuaded most people, then the economists would run the world. It would just be the people that were able to, that macro this and the standard deviations actually inside the intercourseal range and blah, blah. Like, so it, none of that, it's not about that. I love the idea of storytelling, increasing the imprecision within the conversation with, as a tool, almost as a tool, right? And I like the, thinking

• 30:17Chris Williamson?

  about, in myself, sometimes I only just realising it now, use analogy.

• 30:27Chris Williamson?

  As a way to escape being precise with what I'm saying.

• 30:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:32Chris Williamson?

  Because as you say, as soon as you use an analogy, every, the rules of the game are completely out the window. You're not, you're no longer talking about the situation. It's an analogous situation by definition.

• 30:43Speaker 00

  Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. That's a big one.

• 30:46Chris Williamson?

  Checking, checking yourself about, am I using this to enhance the conversation and add flair and sort of color? Or am I doing it to hide myself from, or hide away from a deficiency in rigor and precision about how I'm actually putting this topic across? Those, those are really, really cool. So we got that. Can we, can we try and help the people listening self diagnose the kind of conversationalists that they are? They're thinking, this sounds, this sounds, this sounds good, but I don't know. Am I this person? Am I that person?

• 31:23Speaker 00

  Yes. You know, I'd add one more just to, to fill out the set. So the four kinds of conversationalists. So we've got the, 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 know, you and I, we're having an argument, you say it's not going to rain tomorrow. I say it is going to rain tomorrow. Things get a little bit heated and I go, no, you know, I think it's probably not going to rain tomorrow. I agree

• 32:08Speaker 00

  with you, you know, that, that's okay. And I kind of bail out of, of the conversation. So, so I think those are the four kinds. And if, if I was an escalator, sort of red flags to look out for are, are the conversations, are we making mountains out of molehills? You know, are we, am I reflecting on a conversation afterwards and thinking to myself?

• 32:34Speaker 00

  Wasn't quite as much a big deal as it seemed at the time. You know, to me, that would be a red flag and it's quite difficult to spot in the moment because these things can, these things can build quite quickly. So that would be a question I'd want to ask is, you know, am I getting more heated, more worked up than this this issue really deserves? Consistently. Yes, yes. Um, is this is this kind of where I end up in a conversation and? And there's a risk here because, and and this in fact is what Piers Morgan does is because Piers Morgan lacks

• 33:10Speaker 00

  uh, 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 and that's how he tries to be persuasive. And and he is persuasive, you know, that escalation is is very, it's kind of compelling. Um, 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 I think the one flag for an escalator would be if you're looking back in a conversation, you go, wasn't quite as much of a big deal as it seemed at the time. Um, I I think for the the storyteller,

• 33:54Speaker 00

  um, sometimes we can look back and think, what what actually happened there, you know, what what was that? You know, what what was that about? And and at the time, it seemed convincing, you know, white flags and you know, nobody likes white flags, you know, that that that's got to be wrong. But as you say, you know, then I look back and go, was it a bit cream and how big was it? And you know, what's that that's, you know, I think those are the storytellers is that at the time, it all seemed quite plausible. But then you look back and you think. You know, it's almost like a dream.

• 34:27Chris Williamson?

  When you get down to the brass tacks of what was the number at the end of the conversation?

• 34:31Speaker 00

  Absolutely. What was the number?

• 34:34Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, not the foggiest.

• 34:35Speaker 00

  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 then it's like, well, no. And so that's the storyteller. I think that-

• 34:49Chris Williamson?

  The reason that you're all in agreement is because you're kind of not really agreeing about anything. You're agreeing about this other world that doesn't exist. But everyone's got this, like, everyone's granddad, right, is a storyteller. Everyone's granddad will speak for 30 minutes and you're like, yeah, granddad. But then when he finishes, you're like, what the fuck did he just say?

• 35:11Speaker 00

  That's the thing, you know? And that's kind of the strength and the weakness of the storyteller. And that would be the red flag is like, you know, what was that all about? I think the analyst is, you get left with a feeling of, you know that feeling when you haven't persuaded someone?

• 35:29Chris Williamson?

  All the time, yeah.

• 35:30Speaker 00

  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, this is 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 Haidt. And, and he says, scientists, even when they're wrong,

• 36:11Speaker 00

  are prepared to change their minds in a way that ordinary people are not. And he's got this paragraph where he reflects on the fact that it's very difficult to persuade ordinary people of a view that they hold strongly. Whereas 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, not wrong.

• 36:40Speaker 00

  You know, changed my mind.

• 36:42Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 36:43Speaker 00

  The reason why that is possible is that scientists know the rules of talking. Scientists cannot break the rules of debate. So scientists cannot do things like cherry pick. They cannot ignore evidence. They cannot stick their heads in the sand and pretend that um that they haven't heard an argument. Um, 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.

• 37:25Speaker 00

  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.

• 37:46Speaker 00

  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.

• 38:17Speaker 00

  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 an opportunity for the analysts to become more persuasive is when they're reminded of reason. But 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 argument.

• 38:57Chris Williamson?

  If, if all that it took was facts and figures, then we could just email her on a spreadsheet and not bother to have the conversation. You'd be like, right, it's 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 Jiu Jitsu 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 isn't, there's correlation, there's not correlation. You don't have those objective metrics.

• 39:39Speaker 00

  You know, you, you picked a great example there. Basically, mixed martial arts, 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 champion. And, 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 governed. And then MMA at the time was a bit of a Wild

• 40:23Speaker 00

  West. You know, the UFC had, I don't think had emerged, or at least it wasn't a big deal. And, and this guy used to win fights by breaking people's arms. You know, that was just his technique is 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, 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.

• 40:55Speaker 00

  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 roid rage, like just melting his brain. He's got all of these martial arts skills and a guy weighs 130 kilograms, you know. I mean, this is just a terrifying.

• 41:15Chris Williamson?

  If he wants you, you're his.

• 41:17Speaker 00

  That's it. I didn't even use to look at him. I just used to stay away.

• 41:21Chris Williamson?

  Safest strategy.

• 41:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. And the other one was a chiropractor 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, 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 a generation. And if you go and watch UFC one, you know, where they've got Gracie and sumo wrestlers and karate guys, you know, UFC one, there's a guy who, he knocks over a sumo wrestler

• 42:05Speaker 00

  and he just kicks him in the head, you know, like as he's lying on the ground.

• 42:09Chris Williamson?

  Tooth into row F, doesn't he?

• 42:11Speaker 00

  Well, the one tooth goes into row F, the other one gets embedded in his foot. And, you know, it's kind of wild and, but because there are rules and actually modern UFC is quite rule governed, you know, and they're quite specific rules and the refs are quite quick to jump in and, and people know what those rules are. And this really is my argument for talking is that at the, 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.

• 42:54Chris Williamson?

  Take football. You're going to need to have a lot of work done in people's system too.

• 43:03Chris Williamson?

  For them to slow everything down and be incredibly deliberate for a long time because Yeah. A deliberate conversation is

• 43:15Chris Williamson?

  enjoyable to a point. Yes. But can become a bit arduous after a while, like when you're consciously thinking about everything you say, the Sam Harrisism that 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 are going to this sentence and then this sentence and then this sentence. I don't know how many of those this sentences I'm going to say, you know. Yeah, yeah. But if you're incredibly deliberate, you can choose to do that. And then the point

• 43:59Chris Williamson?

  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 it just occurs as a byproduct of now, right? You don't, 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 heritage is to avoid effortful tasks. Yeah, yeah.

• 44:30Chris Williamson?

  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 and the other. And then you start throwing white flags at me. I'm like, 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. So I, I agree that it would make for a much more enjoyable conversational architecture that we could all exist in. But it requires an awful, like, we can't get people to have consensus about, like, tons of stuff. You're getting them to have consensus about the foundational presuppositions

• 45:11Chris Williamson?

  that occur before we have a conversation may also be challenging.

• 45:16Speaker 00

  Absolutely, yeah. I, you know, I completely agree. And, and, you know, the point you're making about switching between system one and system two, that's rule four, talk fast and slow. And so much of the talking that we do, you know, you and I now, it's quite a lot of fast talking going on between the two of us. You know, 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, and that's a great way to talk. You know, imagine if we're both just reading pieces of paper at each other, you know, that, that would be, that would be terrible. We would have lost something. But there are times when I need to be able to jump in and, and error check. And that's the role of system two

• 45:59Speaker 00

  is to every now and go, no, wait, wait, 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. 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 Peugeot 307 and.

• 46:18Chris Williamson?

  Quality car. Was it in that good metal gray?

• 46:21Speaker 00

  No, darker, darker. Yeah, yeah.

• 46:25Chris Williamson?

  Okay, fair enough. Cool. Tell us about, I want to know. Was it the diesel?

• 46:31Speaker 00

  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, and it wasn't running so well. And, and we were going to visit friends and my wife said to me, let's just take the bus, you know, the car's not working well. And I went, no, it's gonna be fine. You know, there's gonna be no problem. And, and we drove to the friend's house and then we couldn't find parking. So we drove about 100 meters past the friend's house. And at that exact point where we could not be any further from home, it broke down. And my wife turned to me and she went, you know, we should have taken the bus. And, and I remember, I, I can't remember the name of the movie. I think it's called Red October. It's a submarine movie. And, you know, there are times when the submarine, everything's going bad and like there are red lights and people are running around and the sirens going off. And I was thinking, I'm in that

• 47:16Speaker 00

  movie. You know, there are sirens going off, there's red, there's, there's just bad stuff going on. And, and, and, you know, I'd.

• 47:26Speaker 00

  I mean, she was right, obviously. But 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, you know, 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 two is harder than system one.

• 48:00Speaker 00

  And as human beings, we seek efficiency. It's not like any of us have got masses of time in the day that, you know, 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, it's like, do you think the Brexit argument with fast talking, we didn't, 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 us progressing rapidly towards solutions using the fast talking idea. Even the housework, you know how long my household has been discussing the dishwasher for?

• 48:41Speaker 00

  So don't underestimate how long and how energy sapping 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.

• 49:01Chris Williamson?

  For the mental model fans out there, that is direction over speed incarnate 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.

• 49:37Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 49:37Chris Williamson?

  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.

• 49:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 49:54Chris Williamson?

  Get rid of that and then start again. But yeah, direction over 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?

• 50:11Speaker 00

  Well.

• 50:13Speaker 00

  You know, I'm biased, I'm South African Nelson Mandela.

• 50:18Chris Williamson?

  How do you know that you're going to say that? But I mean, he's all right. Yeah, he's good.

• 50:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, I just think, I just think for a lot of reasons, you know, I think in terms of his ability to reach out.

• 50:31Speaker 00

  I think in terms of his ability to tell stories.

• 50:36Speaker 00

  You know, 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 is most people are good, competent and worthy of respect. And, and I think if there's one thing that I've kind of learnt or not necessarily learnt, but just accepted in this whole journey, which has taken me years, it's possibly been rule three. Most people are good, competent 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're disagreeing is because

• 51:20Speaker 00

  you just don't know stuff, you know, our disagreement is rooted in your ignorance or your incompetence. I've got to find a more complex explanation, but a better explanation for why you and I disagree. And I think in terms of, you know, Nelson Mandela. I think he really understood that, you know, he was able to take a national tragedy 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.

• 52:03Speaker 00

  And I think that is what enabled him to speak so persuasively and and powerfully. So, you know, tha- tha- that's me as a South African and you know, and that's me kind of coming of age in in the time that he was really uh talking to the country. Um, I I I think, you know, I mean, the other obvious answer wo- would be Winston Churchill. Um, and you know Winston Churchill is known for, um, we'll, we'll, you know, fight them on the beaches, we'll fight them. Uh, and and that's wonderful storytelling.

• 52:44Speaker 00

  Um, but I spent some time reading through his speeches in detail and and there's actually quite a quite a precise logic that he's applying. And the other thing that he applies is that he links cause and effect, 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.

• 53:12Chris Williamson?

  So is that the analyst seeping in a little bit there?

• 53:15Speaker 00

  That's it, yes. So while he is a wonderful storyteller, he's actually got this um this analytical understanding of the world and this understanding of how processes lead to outcomes. And, uh, you know, for me, that's what makes him a compelling, uh, communicator as well.

• 53:33Chris Williamson?

  He worked incredibly hard at it. I was listening to

• 53:36Speaker 00

  Really?

• 53:37Chris Williamson?

  Ryan Holiday's most recent book, Not Ego is the Enemy, uh, 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, he Churchill did some graft, like, he wrote, he wrote like forty books. And he, he had this unbelievable routine, this walking and writing and painting routine where he did, he was like incredible, you know, for someone that was, and then after the, the war, he was kind of then just sort of left to one side and then kind of forgotten about in a bizarre sort of way, which I don't think many people know. And I found that, I

• 54:19Chris Williamson?

  found that he was an 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.

• 54:29Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 54:29Chris Williamson?

  Trump, is he as much of a master communicator as people say?

• 54:38Speaker 00

  You know, he, he's obviously fits in the storyteller category. So, you know, nobody would accuse him of being an analyst. He

• 54:48Chris Williamson?

  That's the nicest put down I've ever heard. No one would accuse you of being, no one's ever said to you, Donald, that you're too precise, have they?

• 54:57Speaker 00

  Yes, it's too, yeah. And, and no one would accuse him of being a safety firster either. You know, he doesn't shy away from that.

• 55:05Chris Williamson?

  And the opposite, if anything, he's like the anti fragile safety firster, where he digs his feet in even harder.

• 55:11Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, yeah. And, and that's the escalation, you know, he, he just ramps it up. He, every time, he just goes up and up and up. So you've got, you've got this, you've got the storyteller and an escalator. And he's extremely good at that. I think the question you'd have to ask if you were to be critical of him is, how complex are the stories that he's telling? Are these good stories? Are these stories that, that, that, that have a desired effect? Because what is he telling these stories for? And one of the criticism, you know, and if you look at where the US has gone in the

• 55:51Speaker 00

  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-

• 56:14Chris Williamson?

  That would be one hell of a conspiracy.

• 56:15Speaker 00

  Yes, maybe we should, maybe we should have a go at it.

• 56:20Chris Williamson?

  That's a game, Donald. Excuse me, Donald, don't check those antibodies, mate.

• 56:24Speaker 00

  That's it, yeah. You know, but, but I think it's fair to say that the US response has, has not been widely, widely admired. And, and, you know, in terms of applying things like rigor or mythology or consistent approach, or, or things like adequate risk, you could say that there have been gaps in the way that he's led the country. So, you know, 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. You know, if you were to take Winston Churchill, for example, if you were to take Nelson Mandela, they are also storytellers, but they're telling

• 57:06Speaker 00

  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, of fear and division and, and selfishness. And those are kind of easy stories to tell because we've all got switches that are easily tripped.

• 57:27Chris Williamson?

  The lowest, the lowest hanging fruit, right, the lowest common denominator.

• 57:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. So, you know, he tells powerful stories, but in a way they're easy stories to tell. So, you know, and, and then 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.

• 57:48Chris Williamson?

  Seventy thousand votes, yeah.

• 57:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, in, in what is about the three states or something. Let's see how he gets on this time. Because I, 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.

• 58:13Chris Williamson?

  I don't know whether it's that the US coughs and the UK catches a cold or whatever it is, but um, 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. Mm hmm. 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.

• 58:52Chris Williamson?

  And I wonder how much of that is the me being precluded from ever trusting Trump because of what other people say about him. Like, even this, like, I need to, 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 to that, do you know, like, it is difficult. And, you know, 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 going to be able to get through

• 59:36Chris Williamson?

  the rest of our life whilst not working at it. Yep. 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. That doesn't 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

• 1:00:17Chris Williamson?

  top 2% in the world, to the top half a percent in the world, having conversations and 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. Is so much further ahead, like. The difference between Joe Rogan as a podcaster and the next best podcaster is everything, you know, the difference between me now and me two and a half years ago when I started this show is everything is universes apart in the way that I've still got tons of

• 1:00:57Chris Williamson?

  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 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.

• 1:01:20Speaker 00

  Yes, yes, yes. And as you say, it's worth the effort.

• 1:01:26Chris Williamson?

  Hopefully, some people are going to go away from this and be better conversationalists. 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 no extra cost to yourself. Any other stuff that you want to plug, Tim? Any other stuff people should go and check out?

• 1:01:45Speaker 00

  No, I'll leave it at that.

• 1:01:48Chris Williamson?

  That's hey, that's.

• 1:01:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, you kind of put me on the spot there.

• 1:01:53Chris Williamson?

  Are you on Twitter, Instagram, website, blog, any of that stuff?

• 1:01:57Speaker 00

  Twitter, TimHarkness10. Yeah, welcome. Yeah, welcome to check that out. But mainly, I think, you know, I spend a lot of time working on that book. So it's kind of, those are my ideas in there. That's sort of me at the moment.

• 1:02:14Chris Williamson?

  Hey, if this is, if this is a manifestation of you, I think it's a good, a good use of your time, mate. And yeah, let's say linked, 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, it's usually a pretty good indication that it reinforces what they're saying, it reinforces what you're saying.

• 1:02:47Speaker 00

  As a rule of thumb, yeah, kind of tells you you're going in the right direction.

• 1:02:50Chris Williamson?

  For sure. Yeah. So again, if you want to expedite some of your ability to have conversations with people, go and grab this. Tim, thank you so much, man.

• 1:02:59Speaker 00

  Well, thank you. Yeah. And enjoyed, enjoyed our conversation. Thanks very much.

• 1:03:17Speaker 02

  Mr. President, my company foreme of the explosion on our rig.

• 1:03:21Speaker 03

  On October 2nd.

• 1:03:22Speaker 02

  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

• 1:03:26Speaker 03

  Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 1:03:34Speaker 02

  What would happen if I stopped going? You stall, you freeze to death, that's what.

• 1:03:38Speaker 03

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 1:03:41Speaker 02

  I'm not the first then.

• 1:03:42Speaker 03

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.