Ask HN: Did improving conversation and listening skills win you anything big?
We hear that improving how we converse or listen one to one with people says a lot about how we treat or empathize with them in real life situations. Is that actually true?
What other aspects of life improvements have you seen with improving your skills in this domain?
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 185 ms ] threadAs true power is “the capacity for effect” (if it is not effective, it is not powerful); listening and communicating well makes you more effective as a human being at everything, even when to keep one’s mouth shut!
Better relationships, higher quality personal and professional conversations, are only beginnings.
Do not be one of these people who only think in terms of the utility of others. Being a charming douche isn’t an “improvement”. Listening and communicating well are a qualitative human skill, not just “useful.”
Friendship, love, business and having an overall better time, day in, day out.
Improving my understanding of the social interaction between people and how to become a more enjoyable person is the most important thing I accomplished in my life.
Do you have some tips on this journey? Is there some specific approach you followed, a book, or something else?
I can identify a lot of my problems and see how much impact they have, but struggle with actually making improvements.
A good start is to cultivate the ability to stop talking, relax and listen.
I don’t ask the doctor’s administrative assistant about their day in order to get preferential treatment, that’s just a perk that sometimes comes with it. I try to come from a place of genuine interest in others, even though that can be hard to do.
[1] I don’t mean this as a dig or even a negative, I’m just referring to where your focus is in a given situation. Are you focused on yourself, or others?
You try to listen to them, and communicate in such a way so as to create a win-win situation.
By really listening and empathizing with them, you are able to ask the right questions so they give you extra information about their situation, which you can use to understand what they want and explore potential solutions.
People aren't always aware on the moment of exactly what they want or need, so they can't articulate it perfectly. With understanding the situation, you can usually propose a solution that works for both parties. So, in that sense, I'm sure people still like you, as long as you up hold a respectful and communicatively open attitude.
So I don't think people would have a negative opinion of you if you have used the practices from the book in your negotiation.
A great example from Conscious Business (I think) was a salesperson asking for a salary increase of like $20k or something, but it turned out they were worried about the wear and tear on their car and wanted to buy a new car to handle the local travel requirements. Instead, they added a company car to the offer, and everyone was happy.
P.S.: I feel that the name of the book is deceptive. The book touches on a wholistic perspective of communication.
Yes. Conversing with people requires some amount of empathy as you must consider someone else's words in order to be in a state of listening. It's not distinct from "real life". _It is_ your life.
> "... win you anything big"
It's just my impression, and I could be mistaken, but this sounds overly pragmatic. Living life this way leads to getting entrenched in local maxima. It's better to also consider what others want and find compromise. What you sacrifice in absolute immediate gains, you exchange for longer term possibilities and networking.
On the flip side, don't burden yourself with responsibilities that don't interest you, and don't compromise with people who won't appreciate it.
All that said, what I "won" is my social life and career which I am grateful for. To answer if it's anything "big" is all relative. It's a big deal to me. There's no need to be braggadocious. Life is what you make it.
You find a lot of people who suffer from severe social maladjustment and view life as a zero-sum game all over the place (I blame the rise of using game theory to model real situations without a finite turn limit). It's very rare you'll be able to "argue" these people into conceptualizing other humans as unique individuals, it pretty much always comes from problematic upbringings
I think there are people that for one reason or another can overcome this instinct and see a bigger picture of society.
And I think these groups generally coalesce for reinforcement and forms of ideological security. Then they give these groups names.
Well said. This is a frustration I find when giving interpersonal advice to highly analytical, technical folks. Very quickly they're eager to relate what they're experiencing back to mechanisms they're used to (min/max algorithms, video games strats, etc.), usually to their detriment. They're used to the pattern of 1) Gather evidence 2) Understand system 3) Apply actions to system. The art of interfacing with other humans is so profoundly different from any other activity we take part in, I think it's silly to allow the analytical side of our brains to have too much control. The best advice I've been able to give socially stunted engineers is just to think less, and rely more on instinct than on heuristic.
The most socialized, well liked, and gregarious people you remember from high school probably never read a self-help book or a Tips for Making Friends blogpost in their life. They followed their instincts and didn't think too much.
Maybe our basis for measurement is not capable of measuring the data present. Sort of like how when scanning something sometimes the resolution is just too low and thus discards data that is there but we don't see it.
Being able to sit quietly and let the other person speak hugely improved my ability to interject in ways that are relevant and actually increase engagement during conversation. That led to better relationships at home and at work, which led to a better marriage and more influence at work.
I found "Nonviolent Communication" to be a good starter book.
Glad you're working on it, it's probably one of the easiest social bad habits to 'fix' :)
You’re probably just not happy with the resident smart guy regardless of what he says. He could say anything and you’d be thinking “please shit the fuck up”.
It makes you realize that everything is not about you (nothing actually is), and shows how you can use empathy to stop taking things personally but really understand what people are trying to say when they're talking to you.
It has won me multiple work promotions as it makes me better at dealing with other developers on my team, management, other teams, customers and end users.
Listening and asking the right questions are really underrated skills, and improving your interpersonal skills is just as important for a career as technical ones.
As someone who struggles with human interactions, I found the following epiphanies to have caused the largest improvements:
- Talking about something boring you both did together is much better than talking about something awesome you did alone.
- Tone of voice and facial expression are more important than the words you are saying.
One truth is that sometimes, you'll have to get used to lots of different people (some who may not like you for all sorts of reasons) and learning to work around that has really helped me collaborate with people who a hard to get on with. Putting a goal in a conversation mentally has really helped with this.
Quick tip: movies, dramas, and sitcoms are a terrible reference. So is r/relationship_advice unless you're looking for what not to do.
"Ego is the Enemy" by Ryan Holiday established a great baseline mindset to be in.
"Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking when the Stakes are High" is the most applicable book. It explains in detail how other people interpret your actions, and how to approach a delicate conversation with care.
Some in person training helps; I quite enjoyed the sessions my company provided from Life Labs.
Mostly you'll learn being a good listener isn't only shutting up and letting them talk, it's also actively considering what they're saying and asking the right questions.
Thank goodness I started on it before 2020 because we about to go through a lot of challenges together!
To this day I still see "conversing" as a skill. It may require a conscious effort. Listening is not a problem and introverts are generally very empathic, but being a part of the conversation is harder. I can feel tired after a party for example, like I was working all day long. But I also enjoy it a lot: it feels wonderful to genuinely connect with people around me, as long as I can recharge afterwards. Familiar situations are much easier, new situations or meeting new people is harder. But all the more important to be able to communicate well: cannot imagine what it would be like to meet a new boss, or a new person on my team, would I not be able to listen to them well and express my thoughts clearly.
Externally, people with high listening skill are perceived as more mature, professional, reliable and trustworthy.
Quick hack for improving listening: just have a notebook and pencil with you all the time. When you talk with a coworker, make it a habit to pull out the notebook and start scratching notes. It might feel a bit "orthopedic" at first, but you will notice that most people don't mind at all. Writing reinforces memory and makes it more difficult to "tune out". I don't write full sentences, most of the time it's just one or two words which would make no sense for anyone but me. I find is an adequate mid-term (~1 week) memory storage space. "What was that ticket number we talked about last Tuesday? (go back a few pages in the notebook) Oh, yeah XO-7435". This is especially easy to do in a remote setting.
Being able to interpret body language and tone is also part of "listening". Those two can modify the same words to mean literally the opposite of what they sound like in a "neutral" tone. If you suspect you have difficulties here (a lot of folks who get into computers have difficulties with this) there's training courses for this kind of thing. Therapy will also work in some cases.
Conversation skills is the opposite - you produce more bits of info, and the bits you produce are of better quality. It's both more efficient and more effective. If you are an introvert or just don't enjoy smalltalk, consider that improving your speech will allow you to talk less with the people you don't want to spend a lot of time talking with. You will be able to move in, deliver the package, and move out.
Effectively communicating with others involves adapting your discourse to the audience. That's where the "empathy" part comes in. When a taxi driver asks me about what I work with, I don't give him the same explanation I give to my mother, and that is different from what I tell people who know about computers.
From the outside: if you communicate better you will also be perceived as more mature and professional. It's a basic quality for a leader. Your name will pop naturally in conversations like "we need a new tech lead, who should we promote from inside the team?".
So yes, it is definitively true that listening and communicating help.
I am afraid I don't have a quick hack for more effective outwards communication. Listening is a good first step that you can improve on your own, but going in the other direction requires ... practice. That requires interaction with other people. I suggest you start improving your communication skills by contacting people who share your same interests. Do you have any hobbies? Are you interested on a programming language? See if there's a local group you can attend, or create your own group if there isn't any.
https://fs.blog/knowledge-project-podcast/jim-collins-2/
Long story short: Happiness is derivable mainly either through relationships or transactions (can read this as opportunities you create).
The problem: Deriving happiness through transactions doesn't scale beyond you and your abilities and your time. Deriving happiness through relationships does scale.
Coming back to your question: conversation and listening skills are relevant to both. There is more certainty in using these skills towards transactions (think sales). But you should be putting these skills towards relationship building as well. Mainly because other people may be (and often are for strong relationships) happy to help you out for nothing or very little in return mainly because of a trust that if you're able to you will help them for some future endeavors / dilemmas. This can be seen as an investment towards leverage (think sales growth).
The podcast doesn't take the view I wrote here. The podcast conversation is more interpersonally oriented in its view, but the conversation is oriented towards CEOs.
Can you elaborate on how that works? I'm curious.
People will bring up your name in positive situations, which leads to new connections to you without effort on your part.
People are complex, versatile and very unique beings that can teach you so much if you listen to them. Not to mention wanting to know more about the people you are bonding with.
Sure, I have met lot's of self-centered people that expect me to fight for their attention but it is their loss. What is the point in talking if you are not actively listening? You already know what you know. Just write in a dairy or something.
They are, but they learn, often through school, that bringing up facts is how you get praise and appreciation. Then they try to apply this to social situations and are confused why they fail. They conclude that THEY aren't interesting enough, so they double down.
I was this way for a long time (into my 30s), and I couldn't figure out why I had trouble making friends for the life of me.
Wanting to get praise and appreciation from teachers is very foreign to me. I didn't have to put any effort into school because it came pretty easy to me, so I did not.
I mostly wanted to impress my peers. I felt being too intelligent was more of a flaw to hide than a asset. I learned pretty early that people don't appreciate it if you make them feel intellectually inferior.
Might be because I have a working-class background so intellectual accomplishments aren't really that valued in my world to begin with.
I guess you are from a background that would call themselves "middle-class"?
Then I discovered programming in 7th grade and that set my path for the next two decades.
Improving skills that improve relationship building have great downstream effects.
I have walked back from fully cutting them off, but they have too many issues for me to spend time attempting to form a meaningful connection with them.
(ps to anyone: thoughtful comments appreciated with any downvotes)
This is maybe less true in a more pure, academic/engineering setting where it's all numerics and formulae, but even then, all the thinking work is done by humans, whose thoughts and feelings matter.
I think most of all: It's easier to understand reasons why people might be doing/not doing something if you've taken the time and effort to TRULY listen to them beforehand.
As a sidenote, if interacting with people is about winning/losing for you, there might be some rather serious issues for you to reflect on in how you perceive, build, and maintain relationships with other people.
Good luck!
Success in these areas is like 95% social and 5% technical.
If any one single thing has been responsible for my success (contractor, six-fig monthly) it's not that the hill just knows me so well. It's that I know the problems institutions and large corporations face, I know how a lot of them think and how they try to solve them, and crucially: I know how to *actually* solve those problems and get paid.
Unless you are meaning within the universities themselves? Then sure. That's not really what I meant though. The vast majority of students want to graduate and leave to industry somewhere.
How we listen/converse doesn't tell you anything at all about how we "treat" or "empathize" with people in "real life" situations. I listen/converse in a radically different manner when I'm paid to do so. Being skillful in these departments can supercharge sociopathic manipulative persuasion.
I'm not sure how (or why) you are distinguishing between listening/conversing and "real life situations".
We are always unavoidably influencing and being influenced by everything going on around us (and within us). You cannot help but do it, so you may as well do it skillfully. You might even choose to do it ethically. It affects everything that involves interactions with human beings, so for at least a while longer that's going to be "damned near everything".