[[Notes]] - Topics: [[Communication]], [[Connection]] - People: [[Alan Alda]] - Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGo6pTcTgVw --- ## Summary - Be human. Connect with others. Share the warmth, presence, and charisma that comes from being uniquely human. - Your ideas will naturally simplify themselves as you connect with people - meeting where they're at. - [[Simplify by smartening it up, not dumbing it down]]. - [[When we talk in a way that just reflects words on a page, whether we've memorized them or actually reading them, we're giving up the very thing that makes us human - we're giving up that connection]]. - Make contact. Share your story. [[Talk with people, not at people]]. ## Notes ### Communication - **Be human**. Connect by sharing truthful and personal stories and your "why" as to why something is important. - Celebrate the accomplishments and potential of others. - [[The mind can also be an erogenous zone]]. - Humor is at the heart of humility. - **Be a story teller. Tell your story.** ### Simplification exercise - Simplification is **synthesizing** the complex to the simple. - [[My great ability is to exercise my curiosity]]. - "The more naive the question". Having to articulate complexity to answer base level questions helps one discover their true sense of understanding. - [[If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough]]. - [[Simplify by smartening it up, not dumbing it down]]. - "**They weren't lecturing me**. They were really connecting with me, to try to get me to understand it." - "This **conversational mode** not only brought out their personality, but brought out their science **through their personality**." ### Stop lecturing - [[The more you lecture, the less intelligible you'll sound]]. To lecture is to speak from the brain. To converse is to speak from the heart. - Speak from the heart. Share the **warmth** that comes from **being human**. - [[The more you lecture, the more mechanical you sound. When you lecture, you speak from the brain. When you talk, you speak from the heart.]] - [[A mechanical man. No longer a human being.]] - **Question:** What's the difference between a warm connective conversation and a cold distant lecture? ### Improv - "Most of the people who study improv. long enough became very charismatic and many became stars." - [[The most important part of improv is making contact with the other actor]]. - Look at **Viola Spolin** - American theater academic educator and acting coach. - "...not to dumb down the science but to be clear about it. So that the rest of us feel like the'yre talking our language." - "**They allow themselves to get off themselves** and into a common agreement with other people about where they are, what they're working with." ### Being human and knowing your audience - Energy. Warmth. Presence. "They're actually talking to somebody." - "What is it that makes us human? It's this **incredible ability to socialize**". - **The theory of mind** - "We;re looking all the time to find out, what's going on in this person's head" (reading of minds). - "The connection doesn't take place until you can be **turned into the people** you're talking to." - Know your audience. - "How can you tell them something if you don't know where they are while you're telling them?" ### The mechanical nature of reading - "The spontaneity evaporated. It evaporates when you read." - [[Reading is a mechanical process, not a communication process]]. - **The more you read, the less human you sound**. - Sharing information, either memorized or otherwise, can be done either through mechanical lecturing or organic story telling. - There's less "life" when you read. You may sound disinterested in the material, even though it may be your life's work. - "Are the circuits of the brain that is active in reading short circuiting the social parts?" - [[When we talk in a way that just reflects words on a page, whether we've memorized them or actually reading them, we're giving up the very thing that makes us human - we're giving up that connection]] ## Original ![[Alan Alda - The art of communication in science-1.jpg]] ![[Alan Alda - The art of communication in science-2.jpg]] ![[Alan Alda - The art of communication in science-3.jpg]]