【ZhaoWu Share】
The only motivation for us to ask others how they were doing on weekends is that we want to tell others about their weekend lives.
——Chak Paranikma
In 2013, radio producer David Isai had a sudden idea to create a very ambitious program. His idea was amazing and quickly became an international weather vane. But this idea is not new.
I don't say this to erase David's achievements, but I just hope to introduce to everyone the person who inspires him: the legendary figure in the broadcasting industry - Staz Turkel. Staz Turkel had already dabbled in almost all the work of the radio at the age of 29—he had played roles in radio soap operas, broadcasted news, wrote advertising copywriting, and even hosted a show named after himself on Chicago Radio. In this show, he interviewed countless big names, including: Dorothy Parker, Martin Luther King, Bob Dylan , and Tennessee Williams .
but it was not a celebrity interview that won him the Pulitzer Prize for . What Turker remembers most is his interview with ordinary people who do not leave their names in history and are unknown. Turkel spent many years accumulating thousands of hours of interview records, forming an oral history. He traveled all over the United States, walked around the streets, lingered in restaurants, and listened to people telling his own stories. He met people who had experienced World War II and the Great Depression, just asked a few questions, and then listened quietly to them, letting the tape record all this.
He wrote a book in his early years, titled "Work: People Talk about What They Do All Days and How They Feel About These Things". This is not a fascinating title. The characters in the book - garbage cleaners, barbers, hotel waiters, piano tuners, and dozens of other industries - are not engaged in a glamorous profession in people's eyes. If you pass by them at the grocery store, you won't even notice them. But the stories that happened to them are so touching and heartwarming, and they and their lives are unique. This book is not only internationally famous, but has even been adapted into a Broadway opera.
Tecker has been insisting on interviewing and writing. He interviewed more than 5,000 people and accumulated more than 9,000 hours of interview recordings. This is a valuable asset in human history and humanities. When publishing his obituary, the New York Times called him "a person who listens to the United States."
Stazzy Tekel often says that his achievements should be attributed in part to childhood experiences. He grew up in Chicago , where his parents run a small hotel. People of all kinds come and go back and forth at the Turker's house, and many new immigrants were among them. The young Turker liked to sit in the hotel lobby and listen to the stories of those travelers. At that time, he learned how to listen and had an immortal enthusiasm for listening to other people's stories. He wrote in his memoir: "In the interview, the only attitude I have is respect. As long as you listen carefully, the other party can feel your respect. Because the more serious you listen, the more they are willing to talk to you and open their hearts to you."
This reminded me of David Isai again. Once upon a time, Staz Teker walked into people’s kitchens and restaurants to listen to their stories, and decades later, Isai found that it was time to listen to the world again. So he launched a project, which you may have heard of, is called StoryCorps. The concept of the project is simple: He installed a recording booth at New York Central Railway Station and invited people into the booth to record a conversation. Today, StoryCorps has set up recording booths in Atlanta , Chicago and San Francisco . In addition, there is a mobile recording booth that travels thousands of miles across the United States every year, collecting a variety of stories from people who are willing to share their conversations.
StoryCorps has achieved incredible success. Yisai and his colleagues have received thousands of interview recordings from the platform, and some selected interviews will be broadcast on Fridays of the National Public Radio morning broadcast (Morning Edition).Every time I see someone crying while listening to the radio, I think they must be listening to StoryCorps stories.
These stories have a wide range of topics, covering a wide range of topics, from interviews with love experts to interviews with post-war trauma, and everything is included. In these recordings, there are children interviewing their parents' childhood lives, some separated brothers and sisters reunited, and some soldiers telling the long and lonely night of military deployment.
StoryCorps does not attract many celebrities. On the contrary, it gathers some ordinary people. Moreover, they uploaded the recording without any reward. The reason people are willing to sit in small recording booths for 40 minutes is just because they want their stories to be heard and remembered. Isai said the impact of listening to this move was profound. "Listening is a kind of respect for others," Yisai said. "There was a joke, I was a bad listener...I was just too easily distracted by phones and emails...but that's what makes StoryCorps exist. It taught us to listen, and turn attentive listening into a gift in this age of noisy noises. It made us hold others' shoulders, wake them up, and tell them, 'Hey! Let's talk, tell me what you think is most important to you.
Yisai's words resonated deeply. First, he admitted that he was not a very good person, but at the same time he recognized the power of listening and was actively looking for ways to make himself better. I felt very much the same. I was not the best listener, but I knew this skill would play a vital role in all my interpersonal relationships. Use, and I am also working hard to improve.
In fact, everyone is working hard, hoping that they can know how to listen to others better, but few people listen carefully. That is to say, people only listen with their ears, but not with heart to understand, respond and leave memories. The inability to do this is not a personality defect, it can only be said that this is the weakness of human nature. Listening to others is not easy, it seems to be the case for human beings.
Anyone who has lived with babies will find that people are not born to know how to listen. At the beginning of life, we only know how to make noise and make noise. Listening is a skill that requires deliberate training. Ralph Nichols is a pioneer in this field of research and the well-deserved "father of listening". As early as the 1950s, he carried out a series of listening experiments, in his book "Are You Listen?" (Are You Listening ?) In this book, he wrote: "You can draw conclusions because listening has no practical standards, and most people do not know how to listen. Although they have ears and have good hearing, they rarely have corresponding auditory skills to make their hearing work, performing what can be called listening.
Humans like to talk. Speaking is useful and can support and even shape our personality. Scientists at Harvard University have discovered that when people talk about themselves, the pleasure center in their brains will be activated. The researchers asked the people involved to talk about themselves and their opinions on something, and then asked them to talk about others and their opinions on others, while accessing the function MRI instrument for observation. The researchers found that when participants talk about themselves, the dopamine system at the midbrain margin became locally active. This active area is the same as the excitement area of humans when having sex, smoking cocaine, and eating candy. You read that right - talking about the pleasure you bring is like having sex or eating truffle chocolate . What’s more interesting is that the study participants actually didn’t know that anyone was listening to them. They thought they were talking to themselves. It seems that even if the person you are talking to is air, people still enjoy the pleasure of talking about themselves.
This point shows that when we evaluate whether the conversation is successful or not, we may not be very objective. How many times did you feel good after the interview and think you got it done, but then you were surprised to find that you didn’t get that job? There may be thousands of reasons why you are not employed, but one possibility is that you talk too much about yourself and listen too little.Because of this, you feel very good yourself, but the person across the table may not necessarily feel the same. If we regard our feelings as the criteria for judging whether a conversation is successful, we may be misled by the dopamine produced when talking about ourselves.
In another experiment, the researchers asked the experiment participants to answer various questions and received different amounts of money as bonuses, and people could choose to answer questions independently. They can choose to answer questions about themselves, about others, or about a fact.
researchers once again found that people would choose to answer questions that reveal their personal information, even if these questions correspond to less bonuses. To talk about their feelings and thoughts, they can accept bonuses 17% below average. "Just just as monkeys are willing to give up juice in order to see excellent partners in the group, and college students are willing to give up money in order to see attractive opposite sex, our participants are willing to give up bonuses for thinking and talking about themselves."
Our tendency to say rather than listen prevents us from having a great conversation. I found that the word “I heard” is increasingly appearing in daily communication, ironic, and we need to show that we are listening in this way. First of all, the action of "hearing" is passive and does not indicate that you are actively listening to the other party. And more importantly, in fact, many times we say we “heard”, but in fact we are not listening at all. One day I went to the grocery store to buy something and said to the cashier, "My eco-friendly bag is pressed at the bottom of the shopping cart. Please wait, I'll take it." She looked into my eyes and said, "Okay, no problem. I heard it." As she said, she had already put the things I bought into the plastic bag. I had to repeat it twice before she really understood. Have you ever been many times when someone says to you, "You didn't hear what I said at all", and I think what they really want to express is, "You are not listening to me." So, I will deliberately train myself, and whenever someone has any similar complaints, I will immediately stop talking. And almost every time someone complains that I don’t hear what they say, they hit it. I've been distracted long ago. One of the best ways
can help you listen attentively is to remember the conversation, although we rarely associate memory with listening abilities. The research on memory that I mentioned in Chapter 6 was conducted in the 1950s. Researchers found that if we are careless about what we hear, we will forget half of the content within 8 hours. Even if we listen very carefully and concentrate, we will forget 75% of the content after a few months. Remember that active listening is defined as: hearing, understanding, reaction, and memory retention. However, this is not what humans are born with, and has been increasingly forgotten in recent decades.
may be a better listener at some time in human history. With the advancement of modern technology, it is easy for people to forget that reading materials have only been widely disseminated in recent centuries. Over the past centuries, the main sources of information and educational heritage of mankind have been achieved through words. Before the invention of the printing press, human education relied heavily on the ability to listen. It was not until modern society that we began to think that listening to others was a waste of time.
It’s no surprise that today’s way of getting information further undermines people’s ability to listen. When we read articles online, a large number of pictures, videos and links control the excitement points of our brains, and our brains have learned how to skip reading and browse our eyes and search for keywords and points unconsciously. We ignore the details and subtle differences and directly search and receive the parts that are perceived by the brain as the core content.
researchers found that these online reading habits have also eroded our reading habits of offline prints. Today's students are much more difficult to read " War and Peace " than when their parents and ancestors were young.And, when listening to someone else’s speech, we will not be better than browsing a long article online, and we can’t help but click on another page or check emails. We also learned to glimpse the lights during the conversation.
If you are used to expressing yourself in 140 words or less, if someone needs to spend 10 minutes describing what happened to them at work, it will be difficult for you to stay focused while listening to them. Even though online, a large number of charts, graphics, mutated fonts and pictures are used in articles to enhance the readability of the story, many people only read the title. It becomes very difficult for people's brains to pay attention to what others write or say for a long time. Neuroscientist Mariana Wolff calls this situation the "Twitter Brain."
Although few of us are good, positive listeners, most people know nothing about their incompetence. Accenture Consulting surveyed thousands of people with gender equalization in 30 countries and regions, and almost all claimed to be good listeners but the facts showed that they might have been deceived by themselves. 98% of those surveyed felt they were distracted most of the day, more than half believed that digital work was disturbing their listening experience, and 86% said they were multi-minded during conference calls. Remember, humans are not competent for one mind and multi-purpose. It is impossible for you to listen carefully to the phone while checking emails or printing a document. People seem unconscious of the daily habits that interfere with their listening, so they think they are good listeners, but this is not the case.
Most people know the importance of listening, but few people take any action to improve their listening ability. When asked about the importance of listening, most business people and scholars will say that listening is one of the most important skills an effective professional must possess. However, less than 2% of articles in business journals involve topics that are actively listening. The same is true in school, finding a public lecture is easy, but there are very few courses that teach you how to listen. Very unfortunately, listening proves to be a skill that must be taught.
A study in Australia shows that active listening is a conscious act that must be part of a specific teaching, in other words, students can learn to listen better if they realize they are being taught how to listen. This skill cannot be learned by the way while studying other courses such as mathematics and history. Researchers are particularly concerned about the role of facial expressions and body language in communication, as they believe both are keys to effective listening. "As a listener, to ‘listen’ to understand other people’s words, you need not only to understand the literal meaning of language communication," the research report said. "It is also necessary to know the true connotation that non-verbal communication gives it."
The experiment seems to have achieved great success through the use of open space conference technology. Open space conference technology refers to a form of conference organization with specific key tasks but no meeting agenda is set. This can limit the use of computers throughout the conference process and increase face-to-face communication. Students will receive a task and are divided into groups to discuss together in a large open conference room. They were told to listen carefully, think carefully, and be ready to make conference summary statements at any time. The researchers tried to answer the question through experiments: "Can students' understanding of the task be deepened by listening to each other?" The answer seems to be yes.
Listening requires energy consumption and requires us to focus highly, not just the activities of the auditory senses. The messages conveyed in a conversation include three types: language (literal meaning of the discourse), posture (facial expressions, gestures, body postures) and intonation (the tone of our speaking).
We all know that words alone are not enough to effectively convey information. Many joke that there is a need to set up a “sarcastic font” on email and social media so that others can understand that sometimes we are just kidding. Everyone has received emails that seem malicious or insulting, but in many cases, that is not the original intention of the sender.To understand the information others want to tell us, it is not only necessary to understand the literal meaning of the text. Listen to others asking us to mobilize the senses of our bodies and focus them all.
But many of us don't get so devoted in conversation. People simply regard communication as an opportunity to express their needs and opinions, rather than an opportunity to listen to other people's ideas. "Most people listen to others not to understand others," said writer Stephen Covey , "but to reply to others. Similarly, we talk to others because we want to talk, not because we want to listen to others.
Our conversations are often like a bad concert. The violinist plays a music , and the pianist plays another piece. They can look at each other friendly and nod politely, but if they are not playing the same score, the end result will be a mess of discordant noise.
It is difficult to get rid of the bad habit of not giving others a chance to breathe, but it is not impossible to do it. First, try to listen to other people’s thoughts. When another person is talking, think about whether their words have a deeper meaning; observe their facial expressions and gestures, and think about what they want to say. You can also ask a question like this: “Does this mean…? "Do you mean...? "Maybe they have a voice outside of their words. What exactly does their words mean? Why do they tell that story at that node? What is the deep meaning?
and you can predict what they will say next. Only by focusing on what they say now can you predict what they will say next. Of course, there are certain risks in doing so, because you may fall into your imagination and presuppositions of others, rather than making predictions based on what they actually told you. It will seem very self-righteous before others finish the first half of the sentence, so you'd better keep your guesses in your stomach and not say them out. However, this association and prediction can keep you dedicated to the conversation. Note. The next suggestion of
is particularly important in the current political environment: we need to evaluate the evidence and not rush to draw conclusions. This means that we need to listen to what others are saying, rather than hearing certain words or names, and assume their position and what they want to express.
We often understand others out of context just by just a few words. If someone says they support the Second Amendment of the Constitution, we usually feel that we already understand what the other person is. We will not listen to what they say because we think we can predict all their words. For certain topics, we seem to have chosen our position early in the morning. Wish you hear any opposition again.
No one in life will be like the news anchors on TV. When others make different opinions from you, don't rush to block them out and measure the arguments they have made. Imagine if others are right, what does that mean? Or, where did they get the information? You can ask: What is your source of information about that?
's response to others should be based on what they actually said, not what you think they have said or can say. Don't simply classify them as liberals or conservative s, don't use the same routine Talking to them. Listen to what they actually said before responding. This means that sometimes you have to ask them to clarify their position; it also means that you may not know how to respond. But having questions about what you hear also has positive meaning, which means you are really listening.
Finally, try to summarize what you hear in your mind. In this way, you can coordinate the ideas that arise in your mind. Relive what others have said and express it in your own language, and you will immediately find out if you miss something, or there are still questions at a certain point. So, you can ask a good question, such as: "How did you go from the post office to the school? I didn't seem to understand."Remember, listening actively is not just sitting stupidly and enduring other people's long speeches. If it were just that, robots can do it. Listening is a job and needs to move.
I heard a lot of operas when I was a child. My grandfather wrote 8 operas. At home, we often play his music, and of course we often listen to the music of Verdi , Puccini and Mozart . Many American children's knowledge of Wagner is limited to the clips I heard in the cartoon "Half Bunny", and I have heard the entire Wagner mythical opera "The Ring of Nibelungen", But I never liked it from the bottom of my heart. I thought opera was boring. After entering university, I planned to study classical opera. But in my freshman year, I transferred halfway. I found that the new school only provides scholarships to students in the vocal department. I only had 4 days to prepare for the exam, and then I would sing an art song and an opera aria . During those 4 days, I temporarily crammed and listened to countless operas. Although I don’t remember it anymore, I would like to listen to countless operas. I had to sing something later, but after performing in front of the teacher jury, I fell in love with opera. What happened to
? After listening to opera for so many years, I finally stopped just treating it as background music, but listened in with my heart. Before that interview, even when I was enjoying opera in the opera house, even if the lights dim, I sat in the audience and didn't listen carefully. I just let the music flow through my ears, but I thought about something else in my heart. So, when I really did Listen, after listening to it, opera music has caused a huge wave in my heart, and that kind of experience is like being guided by the gods. Sometimes, when I listen to others with my heart, I will have a similar feeling.
In the field of radio and broadcasting, the goal of the host is to speak as little as possible. We must try to let the people interviewed say more, because if only the host is talking, those recording materials will definitely not be useful in the end. So, we have developed a habit of asking questions as concise and direct as possible, shut up after asking questions, and listen to the guests carefully.
and some interviews that I think will be boring are unexpectedly interesting. I once did a secret about it. The interview with the purple lily snail (purple snail) in Chigan was deeply fascinated by the stories of those scientists. They devoted their entire lives to protect this small, unsightly mollusk . I spent a lot of time wandering around the gas station and interviewing passers-by there. I have met all kinds of people, with different backgrounds and uneven income levels, all of them are rushing to their respective destinations, with their own unique charm and wisdom.
If you want to be smarter, please listen carefully; if you want to make your marriage stronger, listen actively to your partner; if you want to gain better friendship, don't chatter and listen to your friends. "It is the most basic of all human needs," said Dr. Ralph Nichols, "it is to understand and be understood by others. And listening is the best way to understand others." It is no exaggeration to say that listening is the most important skill I have developed in my life, no doubt.
OK, in this chapter, I can no longer continue to quote others. Speaking of the importance of listening skills, there are countless wise men in the world who have said countless incisive quotes, which are better than what I have explained. However, please allow me to end with the words of my favorite guest interviewed - Salman Rusidi . In his book "Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights), there is an elf character who has magic to hear other people's voices. When I asked about the character Rusidi, he said, "She just puts her ears on your heart and will find the deepest desires in your heart... I think a writer should be the best listener. As a writer, you must have a ability to hear people's true voices and present these truths with your works. So, yes, listening is a great magic.
