If it is so Good to Talk, Why is it so Hard?: Rediscovering the Power of Conversation

By Ian A. Marsh

Communication is the key to success in life – both personally and professionally.  Focuses on the neurophysiological roots of poor communication and how to address them.  Helps to develop important skills to use in conversation. 
‘Talk to them.’ ‘Have the conversation.’ ‘You have to tell them.’  
We have probably all been there, whether it was the advice of someone close to us, or our own inner voice. 
It is always good advice, but some conversations are hard. We just cannot get the words out. Or we try our best but someone gets angry, or defensive, and it all goes horribly wrong. Maybe we think we got our point across, but it turns out that no-one was listening. Or, perhaps, that was us?
What would life be like if feeling understood – by your family, by your colleagues, by your friends, even by those you strongly disagree with – was a regular experience?  
If it is so Good to Talk, Why is it so Hard? brings together the latest neuroscientific research, ancient wisdom and the author’s own experience of helping families through their hardest conversations. It explores why those shutters come down so easily and, through a series of guided reflections, shows us how we can rediscover the power of conversation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Apr 28, 2019
• ISBN: 9781838599171

Ian A. Marsh

Ian A. Marsh has been working with business families for more than 40 years, first as adviser and litigator, later as trustee and confidant, and then as mediator. Today, Ian works as a listener, coach, facilitator and mediator, helping families to talk about the things that matter most to them.

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Copyright © 2019 Ian A. Marsh

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To Rosy

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Part I: Conversation

1. Keeping company

2. Rules and Responsibilities

3 When I use a word...

4. Text and context

Part II: Barriers

5. The ‘E-word’

6. Safety first

7. Perception is everything

8. Remembrance of things past

9. Meet the ancestors

Part III: Bridges

10. Give me the child until he is seven

11. Being there

12. Being here

13. Beginner’s mind

14. That could be me

15. The ‘L-word’

16. One husband, five wives

17. Save as draft – delete

18. Practice makes…

Part IV: Community

19. Belonging

20. Glue and grease

Afterword

Reflections

Appendix 1: Universal emotions and labels for them

Appendix 2: Who’s Who

Notes

Bibliography

Endnotes

Acknowledgements

There are many people without whose appearance in my life this book would never have happened. Sadly, some of them are no longer with us. Others I only ever interacted with online, or through their own writing. Many of the most important – all the clients I have worked with, and learned so much from over the years – must, for obvious reasons, forever remain anonymous.

Those whom I can acknowledge openly are, in the order of their appearance in the story of my life: Roselyn Fell, Michael Carter, Malcolm Gammie, David Tandy, John Rowe, David Jenner, William Ury, Edmund Granski, John Ding Teah Chean, David Richbell, Joanna Kalowski, Daniel Siegel, and Carol Seah.

I must also thank Christian Stewart, Riccardo Abbate, Kecia Barkawi-Hauser and Alexander Barkawi for reading and commenting on various sections of the book in draft. Any remaining errors are, of course, mine alone.

When I began, I could not have known how good a case study the writer–editor conversation would have made. Heartfelt thanks to Lisa Cordaro for her wisdom and patience throughout the conversation that turned manuscript into book-in-waiting.

Huge thanks also to all at Troubador who have helped turn book-in-waiting into book-in-hand: to Heidi Hurst, not only for managing the whole process but also for giving the book its look, both choosing and setting the type; to Chelsea Taylor for her work on the cover design; and to Kat Rooke for reading the proofs. Between them, they have given my text its context.

Last but no means least, huge thanks also to Wendy Baskett for providing the part of the book I was taught long ago to read first in non-fiction; its index. You’ll notice that the index has been removed for the ebook version, as the interactive ebook format renders it unnecessary - as the amount of text on the screen will vary depending on how large or small the reader has set the font size on their device, page numbers will be different for everyone. If you are looking for a specific term or phrase, simply use the search function on your mobile phone, tablet, or e-reader.

If you do happen to dip back into the book in print at a later stage and make use of the index, I do hope you’ll appreciate Wendy’s talents.

Introduction

The Chinese philosopher Laozi¹famously said that ‘the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step’..² So it must. Take no action and, believe it or not, nothing will happen. But written Chinese, being ideographic, never has one clear and fixed meaning, and what Laozi wrote can be equally well translated as saying that the journey ‘begins beneath one’s feet’. Start from where you are, not from where you would prefer to start – and so we should.

Most of us probably regard ourselves as pretty good communicators. After all, we do it every day, and have been doing it since we first opened our eyes, looked up into our mother’s face and told her in no uncertain way – but without a single word – that we needed her to care for us for a little while: actually, for quite a long while! For most of us, that works out pretty well, but what of our later conversations? What do those we talk to think? Do we even bother to check? Or do we take it for granted, like breathing: something that happens rather than something we do – a skill.

I have spent much of my professional life working with families who choose to complicate their relationships as spouses, parents and children, siblings or cousins, with those of business partners, employer and employee, investor and investee and so on. By and large, these people are smart, well-educated and successful – financially at least. They can, and do, finish one another’s sentences without thinking, yet there are still things – usually things that are really (if not existentially) important to them – that they just cannot bring themselves to talk about. They may love one another dearly, but they just cannot help pressing each other’s ‘hot buttons’.

If smart, well-educated people who love one another, and who spend both their working and their family time together, struggle to have meaningful conversations about the things that matter most to them, what hope is there for the rest of us? What hope for those of us who live in much looser communities, let alone for communication with strangers or, heaven forfend, those we might see as enemies?

In Part II we will explore what modern neuroscience has to tell us about why poor interpersonal communication is actually the typical human experience. I have to say here that I am no scientist. I come to this from the field of conflict, first as a litigator, then as a mediator, and now as a teacher, coach and facilitator. Along the way I was introduced to the work of Daniel Siegel, who pioneered the field of interpersonal neurobiology (IPNB), which explores the ways in which relationships and the brain interact to shape our mental lives. Looking for common findings across disciplines, IPNB seeks to balance subjective experience with science: to be consistent with science, but not to be constrained by it.³

I could not put Siegel’s book Mindsight⁴ down (although to be fair, I was on a 13-hour flight at the time!). I had so many lightbulb moments on that flight: so many explanations of things that I had lived and worked through, which now seemed to make much more sense. For me, it was the beginning of a fascinating journey further into the science around what I do for a living.

I have to say too that the science presented here is not the result of a comprehensive review of all the available literature on the subject – far from it. My process began with my studies of IPNB, and rippled out as interesting references led to Amazon order (or Google Scholar search), which led to more interesting footnotes, and so on. Have I simply fallen prey to confirmation bias (see Chapter 8)? Maybe, although I have made a conscious effort not to do so. Having said all that, while the science is interesting in and of itself, what is most telling for me is when modern science, ancient wisdom and direct personal experience coincide.

Other views of all this are, of course, available – and may turn out to be right. What we ‘know’ with such certainty today so often turns out to be ‘not quite right’ tomorrow. Even Newton’s laws of motion and Einstein’s theories of relativity turned out to be just special cases.5 As the Dalai Lama has said of Buddhist psychology,6 if science shows it to be wrong, it will have to change.7

In Part III I will explain what we can all do on a daily basis to develop habits of mind – in fact, to rewire our brains – to keep our social circuitry turned on and tuned in to those around us, greatly increasing our ability to make ourselves (and those we talk with) feel both heard and properly understood. The ideas presented here originally grew out of my work with families in conflict, and have been refined over time in light of both science and further experience.

Finally, in Part IV I will discuss what we can do to develop a prosocial, pro-communication, sense of community – a predisposition in our families, and in the other groups we belong to – in order to create a space in which we can have the conversations we need to have more skilfully. A space where disagreement does not mean putting our relationships on the line.

Given its subject matter, this book can do no other than seek to be a conversation between author and reader. To that end, it is written in the first person and addresses the reader throughout in the second. On reflection, though, I have removed the many contractions (I’ll, couldn’t, should’ve, etc.) that peppered my first draft, as they pepper the colloquial English of 21st-century England. The rest of the English-speaking world does not necessarily share them, nor those for whom English is not their first language. I have, necessarily, retained them in quotations.

I have wrestled long and hard with how to refer to the other parties to our conversations. ‘Interlocutor’ may be accurate, but it is archaic and at risk of sounding pompous, reminding English readers of a certain age of Sir Humphrey Appleby in the TV sitcoms Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister.8 ‘The other person’ is equally accurate, but too impersonal for conversation, not to mention somewhat stilted. I could frame all by way of example, and give all my characters names, but that is not how I would talk to you if we were face-to-face – and if I did, no doubt you would soon tire of me and seek other company!

Yet the idea of a name is attractive. After all, we talk to other people. Yes, we do talk to animals, and indeed to inanimate objects (although, to be fair, that is often more shouting than talking!), but when we do that we are anthropomorphising, treating them as people, and people have names. Indeed, it is when we take away people’s names, when we treat them like numbers, that we cut them off from us the most – we excommunicate them.

In the end, I have opted for ‘Alia’ – from the Latin for ‘other’ – always capitalised to signify someone’s name and, hopefully, with the Sufi maxim ‘The Other is my Brother’ firmly in mind. Or Sister, for ‘Alia’ struck me as suiting either just as well, and both genders are represented, interweaved, throughout the text.

The other major challenge in pulling all this material together is that it is not really susceptible to linear logic: if A, then B; if B then C simply does not hold. I am tempted to say that it is more like a Venn diagram in which all the circles overlap, each containing and dependent on at least part of many others, a coherent picture emerging only when all are taken together. In truth, I suspect that the various topics presented here, particularly in Part III, are more like the facets of a single brilliantly cut gemstone, each illuminating the others, but relatively dull and meaningless without them.

Having said all that, I have presented the material in an order that will make sense in the serial world of the printed word, but would ask you to try not to let your pattern-seeking brain read too much into that order. If you prefer to dip in and out, particularly within the different parts of the book, hopefully that will work too.

I believe deeply that we can all learn to communicate more effectively, and that better communication enables us to make better decisions (both individually and collectively), have more influence on those around us, and deal more constructively with the differences that inevitably occur in our lives. I believe just as deeply that the fact that we all have room for improvement does not mean that there is currently something wrong with us, something that needs to be fixed. For example, I have many skills that could be improved with practice, and there are many things I cannot do, like play the piano or chess, that I could learn if I chose to do so. Why choose to spend the time on communication, rather than chess or the piano? Because I believe that with better communication skills we can change so much – and that without them, we seem powerless to change much at all.

To end on a word of warning: just as reading a book on exercise will not make you fit, and reading a book on eating healthily will not make you thin, reading this book will not give you the gift of tongues, or indeed of ears. I am afraid you have to do the work – and you have to keep on doing it, even after you have read the whole thing (although if you choose forever to carry a copy with you, that too would be much appreciated!).

I cannot say whether perfect communication exists. If it does, it will probably come in that bright light that those who talk of near-death experiences report. If it comes to you sooner, remember: it is not an end in itself but simply a tool and, like most of its kind, can be easily lost at the bottom of the toolkit, or dropped along the way.

For the rest, it remains a wonderfully attractive destination, and I hope you get as much from the journey as I do. I would love to hear about it. Contact me through www.good2talk.online.

Part I:

Conversation

1.

Keeping company

Where does this journey start for you? What is beneath your feet right now? What is the difference for you between conversations that do work and those that do not? What other people say they experience is interesting – it is always comforting to know that it is not just you (whatever ‘it’ is) – but it is your own direct, personal experience that we want to improve, and only you can ever truly know what that is.a So, when you get to the end of this paragraph, before you go on any further, please put the book down and do as I ask between here and there.

Finding your feet

First, find somewhere quiet. If you are commuting or doing anything else that demands your attention, you may prefer to wait until you get home.

Make yourself comfortable. Close your eyes and bring to mind a time when, for whatever reason, you failed to have a conversation that you really needed to have.

Perhaps no matter how many times you went over it in your mind, you just could not bring yourself to say what was in your head. Your mind may have been screaming, but your tongue just would not move. Maybe you thought Alia would be unmoved by whatever you said, or that deep down you did not really deserve what you were seeking. Perhaps your relationship with Alia is worth too much to you for you to put it at risk. Or maybe life seemed just too short to bother.

Perhaps you tried to spit it out (and that may be exactly how it felt – that your mouth literally would not make the noises your brain wanted it to), and Alia just wandered off (whether physically or mentally), wondering what on earth was wrong with you. Or maybe he did not even notice you were there, or just refused to play.

Maybe you started off just fine, but Alia came back at you with an answer that you simply were not expecting – one that had not featured even once in your incessant mental rehearsals – you got flustered and the moment was gone. Perhaps Alia got angry, which made you angry too, or maybe you felt resentful or ashamed, and the whole thing got completely out of hand.

It does not matter what may have gone wrong, just that it did not go as you wanted it to go. Whatever the situation, let it fill your mind: the time, the place, the people, the mood, the smell, the sounds, the words. Make the memory of it – all of it – as intense as you can, then just sit with it for a while.

Do not worry if you cannot recall such a situation. Maybe you are lucky enough never to have been there. Or maybe, like lots of us, you put memories of painful experiences somewhere in your mind that is harder to get to – that is perfectly normal. Either way, if you cannot remember such a time, try and imagine what it would have been like if it had happened.

What was that like, physically? Perhaps your pulse raced? Your breath shortened? Your mouth dried? Your chest tightened? What emotions did you experience? What thoughts and images come to mind?

You might find it helpful to write it all down. No one else need ever see it. Indeed, you can destroy it once you are done, although you might find that keeping a journal as you go through the book – which you can look back through from time to time – might be an interesting exercise. Either way, I suggest you write the old-fashioned way rather than with a keyboard: it engages different parts of the brain.

When you recall what it was like back then, how does that make you feel now? Are the thoughts and feelings you experience now, as you reflect on the exercise, the same as the ones surfaced when you did it, or different? Do you find yourself explaining to yourself why it was the way it was back then, looking for patterns and explanations? Or do you just accept that it was as it was?

When you are done, take a minute to bring yourself back to the here and now.¹Bring to mind five things you can see in the space around you (if it helps, name them silently to yourself). Now, five things you can hear, five things you can feel, or that are touching you.

Now, close your eyes and focus on your breath. Do not try to control it. Just breathe in and out normally, but become aware of where you feel your breath most. It might be the cool of the air entering your nose, and the warmth and moisture of it leaving. It might be the rise and fall of your chest, or of your belly. You may feel the whole thing as one movement. It does not matter which. If you do not feel much at all, try resting one hand gently on your belly and see if that helps.

Now just focus your attention on the place you feel the breath most for a few moments. It is almost certain that your mind will wander off. Do not worry, that is what minds do. When you notice it has, gently bring your focus back to the breath. After 20 or 30 seconds, open your eyes and let your mind do what it will, be that busy or at peace, bouncing from one thing to the next, or settled.

Now bring to mind an occasion when a conversation went really well. As before, immerse yourself in the place, the time, the people, the mood, the smell, the sounds, and the words, and make the memory of it – all of it – as intense as you can.

Again, do not worry if you cannot recall such an occasion – that is perfectly normal too. Some of us have not been fortunate enough to have that experience yet. Others may simply not notice when they do, and so do not bother tagging them for easy recall. If nothing comes to mind, try to imagine what it would be like if it did – and make the experience as intense as you can.

Recalled or imagined, sit with it for a while. What was that like, physically? Calming perhaps? Relaxing? A sense of warmth? Or perhaps a sense of elation at a victory hard won? Pride even? Write down the whole range of sensations, emotions, thoughts and images that you experienced – and that you experience now as you do that.

Again, when you are finished, bring yourself back to the here and now: bring to mind five sights, then five sounds, then five touches, then the rise and fall of the breath. Just a minute or so for the whole exercise is fine – but do not be obsessed with the clock either. If your mind wanders, do not beat yourself up over it, just gently bring your focus back to the breath. When you are done, open your eyes and let your mind do as it will once again.

I am guessing that the second experience was much more pleasant than the first (I certainly hope it was!). In any event, we will come back shortly to some of the neurophysiological reasons why your experience of communication and miscommunication may be so different. However, before we turn inwards, let us look at this from the outside and consider what a ‘good conversation’ might look like.

What is a good conversation?

So far, I have used ‘communication’ and ‘conversation’ almost interchangeably, but they are actually quite different. Communication is about sharing information. The word comes to us from the Latin verb communicare, which means ‘to share’. However, we can share information in many ways: a postcard in the window of the local newsagent, magazine articles, radio and TV broadcasts, tweets, blogs and vlogs, and so on.

When we talk about ‘great communicators’, we generally mean great orators, people who can hold and sway a large audience. Amazing talent though that is, it too is essentially broadcasting, putting the information you want to share out there and leaving it for others to tune into, or not. Of course, the orator plays with our emotions and appeals to our moral sensibilities as well as to (so-called) rational argument² – and he certainly wants something from us, whether to follow where he leads, or simply our approval – but it is essentially one-way traffic. There may