It was also a shame that it just felt like Nihal's ego was seeping throughout the entire book. By the end of the introduction, I was already growing to dislike him after constant bragging and ensuring the reader knows how talented and qualified he is at conservation. This continues, and by the final chapter, he is still singing his own praises. It was hard to get through. In one study, for example, researchers recorded people’s conversations for four days and coded them. “They found that people who spent less time alone and more time with others had better life satisfaction and that more meaningful conversations (rather than small talk) were also associated with higher wellbeing,” Heyman said.

And just just to build on that point, again, the the nuances around company culture, ethos, vision values, how does the senior leadership team measure someone’s performance against those types of behaviours? Because sometimes it can be quite subjective around how well someone is or isn’t achieving against those elements. How was the senior leadership team? Would they measure those? And those nuances?I'm just happy they didn't say, "Nope, we didn't lose a submarine. Nobody look at it." So at least they started with actually trying to find it. So, the last question I'll ask you, Celeste, is one that I do ask everyone on the show, but can you tell me about a moment of leadership in your life that changed your perspective? So, whether it's something that was positive, and you said, "Hey, this inspires me to go further," or even something negative of a moment of leadership that you're like, "Okay, I'm going to do something different in the future than that." A moment of leadership that changed your life.

When I read the first line of chapter 1, I actually cringed. "The Oxford English Dictionary defines conversation as...". 🤢 One way Heyman likes to promote good conversations is to seed them. This is similar to what she does to start a discussion in class, asking people to come prepared to discuss a specific memory, for example.And finally, if you talk over someone, you silence or drown them out by talking more loudly than them. That’s the end of our conversation, but remember to join us soon for more trending topics and useful vocabulary. Bye for now! This week’s Unthinkable column has some sobering news for you. Despite all those years of voicing opinions and dazzling others with your intellect, you may not be able to hold a conversation. Absolutely. And just building on your point there Richard my, my experience in managing teams and speaking to individuals that from an employee perspective, so that individual who’s coming to that performance management conversation, there needs to be clear, concise messaging and honesty in those conversations. I mean, there may be a time that the employees actually may feel a bit nervous, but the thought of upon was management conversation is quite an emotive subject sometimes, especially if there is a culture within the business that has that sort of anxiety around those types of conversations. And having the message clearly delivered without the the fluffy added bit really helps for understanding of what’s required. And and I think is fundamental with with performance management conversations at all levels. Really. Nihal sees an important difference between ‘listening simply to reply’, and ‘listening to understand’. When we ‘listen to reply’, we are thinking about the next thing we want to say more than trying to understand the other person’s point of view. ‘Listening to understand’, on the other hand, helps build bridges - improve relationships between people who are very different or do not like each other.

So what do you see is the role of performance management in an organisation and what is the role of a senior leader or manager in the process.

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So, I will start by repeating a little bit of what I just said, which that very often when people say they don't know what to talk to somebody about, it's because they're focused on what they can talk about. They'll look at somebody who's very different from them. They'll say, "I have nothing in common with this person, and so therefore nothing to talk about." But if you're less focused on that, what you're going to talk about, as opposed to what could this person tell me, you always can talk about that. So how does the senior leadership team change this stigma attached to what should be a really beneficial concept to this individual? Wow! OK, let’s recap the vocabulary we’ve learned from this programme on the art of good conversations, starting with chinwag– a long and pleasant conversation between friends. Something can be considered a good conversation if it does what the people involved want it to do,” Heyman said. “People have a wide variety of goals in conversations, and in some cases the goals are strategic, such as convincing someone to agree with you or getting them to realize that you exist. These kinds of conversations are important, but they don’t interest me all that much. You also have to be willing to have the door slammed in your face a few times.” A lot of public speech takes place today in the performative space of social media. Are we losing the ability to hold a conversation?

When people think about being a good conversationalist, they focus on the talking part, and not the listening part,” Heyman said. “We often think of listening as a passive process, but it doesn’t have to be. Active listening involves giving your undivided attention to people. This helps people feel understood and cared about, and it can build trust and strengthen relationships.”

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That's so interesting. It's that, I'm thinking of when you lay awake at night and you're replaying this conversation in your head and you're like, "I said everything wrong. I've totally embarrassed myself," especially when it comes to a work situation. So maybe the other person isn't noticing some of these things, but there are a few things maybe we're doing where we do come off worse than we want to be perceived. So where do a lot of people go wrong in their conversations? How do we mess this up? All of a sudden, a lot of us are having conversations over Zoom or FaceTime. What advice do you have for better conversations in this socially distant moment? Human beings are group thinkers. We are a hive mind. That is how we do our best thinking. And yet, leaders have this tendency to narrow and narrow and narrow the number of decision makers down. And I highly encourage you to stop doing that. You are so much more likely to make decisions that you may not like but are better and going to lead to better outcomes if you open it up. And be brave, be courageous, and open it up to everyone. The janitorial staff. I'll give you just one example from the book, The Wisdom of Crowds, and other places that cite it. At one point, the US government lost a submarine in the Atlantic Ocean, and they brought in the best experts they could find to figure out where the submarine was. Could not find it. So, one of the people on the team said, "You know what? I'm just going to take a poll."