Communication is key, but the looks are changing.
In our digital age of texting and emails, less spoken language means less emotion, tone and social cues.
A study from the University of Missouri-Kansas City shows that each year we speak about 300 fewer words.
As political polarization increases and arguments and debates dominate our dialogue, how do we re-learn the art of communication?
Navigating sensitive topics and confronting others is difficult, but an essential skill in all facets of life, whether it's family, friends or the workplace.
And, inevitably many people are using AI for advice.
We’ll learn about difficult conversations, how to approach them, and tools to strengthen our dialogue skills.
Guests:
- Matt Abrahams, lecturer in organizational behavior, Stanford Graduate School of Business
- Maggie Hallett, associate director, Mental Health America of Ohio
- Aaron Yarmel, associate director, Ohio State University's Center for Ethics and Human Values/founding director, Philosophy Counseling and Consulting
Transcript
This transcript is generated with AI. To ensure its accuracy, review the audio file.
Amy Juravich: Welcome to All Sides with Amy Juravich. A study from the University of Missouri, Kansas City shows that each year, we speak about 300 fewer words. In our digital age of texting and emails, less spoken language means less emotion, tone, and social cues.
Matt Abrahams is a lecturer in the organizational behavior at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. And he recently wrote an article titled "Why Young People Are Struggling to Communicate." He also hosts the podcast, "Think Fast, Talk Smart," and he's the author of a couple of books on communication. And he joins us today. Welcome to All Sides, Matt.
Matt Abrahams: Great to be here with you, Amy. Thank you.
Juravich: So what led you to write this article? So it's called, "Why Young People Are Struggling to Communicate?" What were you noticing that caused you to write this piece?
Abrahams: Well, my colleague Rachel Conrad and I, among others, have noticed over the years that young folks, particularly teens, are struggling with their communication. It's very short. It's hard to be responsive when you're having a conversation.
And many of them feel incredibly uncomfortable in communication situations. They feel very anxious and are unaware of what best to do. So we wanted to bring this attention to the issue and provide specific advice and guidance to those who are in young people's lives, be it parents or advocates for children, teachers, etc.
Juravich: Yeah, so this goes beyond just they want you to text them, not call them, right?
Abrahams: Although that's very true, I have two kids myself and I get yelled at every time I call them instead of texting them.
Juravich: Right, right. So what alarms you the most about where communication skills are heading? What do you worry about when you think about the young people not knowing how to talk to each other?
Abrahams: Well, so to me, communication is operationalized critical thinking. And my biggest concern is that people are not thinking deeply about the types of interactions we have. Communication is essential for both our professional and personal lives.
It's how we connect, it's how learn, it is how we grow. And if the young folks aren't able to do this well, then they're setting themselves up for challenge and our society has issues.
Juravich: So you're a lecturer at Stanford, but you're in the graduate school. So at its heart, you have students who are maybe a little bit older, but then also maybe better communicators. I mean, if they've made it to the Stanford graduate school, I would hope that they can communicate. But were you noticing it with your students as well?
Abrahams: Absolutely, so we see it ubiquitous, and it's not just students, you can see it in the workplace, but it manifests in lots of different ways. Like I said, it's discomfort around just normal interactive communication. Communication has become much more transactional.
The problem with devices is it makes it very transactional, not connective. And we see that in our students at Stanford and elsewhere, but if you talk to teens in particular, they are very aware that communication is hard for them and they're looking for support.
We have, you know, a lot of work I do is in the community. I'm on a board of a nonprofit that helps teenagers learn how to communicate better. And we hear from the teens all the time. We'd like help. We know this is a challenge for us.
Juravich: So you, in your piece, you listed some practices that parents, teachers, professors should use when interacting with younger generation. We'll get into a few of those, but I wanted to start with the recommendation you made about cold calling. So you want teachers to call on students at random, not just go with the ones who have their hand up. Why is that?
Abrahams: Yeah, so I'm actually not a big fan of what's called cold calling, where you just randomly pick people. I like warm calling, letting people know that it's coming because I don't think it's fair to put anybody on the spot like that.
But yes, so if students are aware that they have to be present and understand what they have, the work they have done, that when you look at them and call them to come to the conversation, they'll engage in a very different way, right? A lot of students, and many of us remember this ourselves, waiting for the other person to respond, hoping somebody else responds so you don't have to.
Knowing that you might have to communicate causes you to show up and prepare in a very different way. So that skill and that situation, paired with the many others that we suggest, I think is one tool that can help adults encourage kids to be present, to think about their communication and to be ready.
The reality is teens in particular are very sensitive to how others feel about them, and if they know that they have to articulate a position well in front of their peers, you can use that to actually help drive the importance of communication skills.
Juravich: I like that you're calling it warm calling though. So you're basically, you're giving them a warning. You're like, I'm, I want you to participate in this class. It's kind of just saying participation is required, right?
Abrahams: Right, and that your voice is important and we wanna hear it and I as the orchestration, you know, the person who orchestrates the class wanna know what I might call on you. So come prepared, nobody should be surprised in a class.
Juravich: You're listening to All Sides on 89.7 NPR News.
We're talking about navigating conversations and improving our communication skills with a Stanford professor in organizational behavior, Matt Abrahams. So you also recommend that students join a club or get a job.
So how does getting a job, in the article you mentioned, learning how to manage a breakfast rush at a copy shop will definitely give you communication skills. So tell me more about how. Why you think young people need to get a job to communicate.
Abrahams: I think it's really important for young people to get out in the world and work and interact with others. And so the process of looking for a job and positioning yourself for it, the actual interviewing and then the job itself, all have the opportunity for students to learn critical thinking skills, communication skills, and give them the day-to-day practice of communicating.
So anything that does that, joining a sports team, joining a debate team writing poetry. Interacting with others is really critical. And in the work world, young folks will be interacting with older folks and intergenerational communication is wonderful. It's a great opportunity to learn and it's to appreciate and understand that people have different perspectives.
So it's an opportunity for these young folks to actually practice communication skills, see the importance of them and observe and see other role modeling effective communication.
Juravich: Another recommendation you make, which kind of relates to that idea of participating in class is you want students to take pride in their own thoughts. So that can relate to when you're in class being ready to participate and answer the question and that your opinion matters, like you just said. But also you're saying here not to let AI replace your thoughts. So tell me more about that.
Abrahams: Yeah, so students have, all of us now have access to technology that can fundamentally help our communication. The problem is when you abdicate the critical thought behind it, and it can be easy to plug something into an LLM and have it give you a response.
But if you don't own it, if you do not understand it, you do have that detailed appreciation of the thoughts that went into it, then you are in a deficit position. So it's important for students to realize that their opinions, their thoughts... Have value, doesn't mean they're right, doesn't means others are right or wrong.
It just means we show up appreciating our understanding of what we know and represent it well. AI and other technology can be a very useful tool when we use it as a tool. And young people who have grown up around this technology interact with it in a way that's different than people of my vintage. And it's important for them to understand that it is but a tool, it is not the means.
Juravich: How much of this can we blame on social media, that everyone's communicating through their phone, not just with texting instead of calling someone, but is that a part of the problem too, that we're doing too much communicating just by watching videos and commenting on Instagram and TikTok?
Abrahams: Well, I think it's very easy to scapegoat this issue on social media. Social media certainly contributes to it. But social media can also be a wonderful platform to help people hone and develop their communication skills.
Again, in moderation, appreciating that there are algorithms driving what it is we see and recommending things to us can help us, we can leverage the tool to help us or we can simply fall victim to it. Part of what's critical, I think, on parents and teachers and other folks in kids' lives is to help them understand what's behind the algorithm, what's beyond the way the companies that produce the social media, what their incentives are versus what yours might be. Again, enhancing critical thinking and encouraging to judge and evaluate on their own.
Juravich: What about the older generation? I mean, we can't put all of this lack of communication blame on younger people, right? You know, everyone's burying their heads in their phones now, so. Absolutely, yeah.
Abrahams: Absolutely. I think a bigger cause of all of this is probably the pandemic and how the pandemic changed communication. It introduced screens, tools like the one you and I are using now, but it made communication more transactional instead of relational.
We use communication just to get stuff done. And that's an important part of communication. But communication is really about connection. It's about collaboration. It is about appreciation and understanding. And we, as the older generation in this scenario, we also fell victim to that transactional approach.
And young folks are emulating what they see in their homes and their schools and their churches and other places. So we have to take that responsibility. One of the bits of advice I recommend is adults and kids' lives need to talk through their thought process, their communication process.
So don't just have your child, if you're a parent, see the outcome of your decision, talk them through the process. Well, I decided to do that versus this because we have to role model the relational connective pieces of our decisions, of our interactions, so that kids actually see that rather than just share with them the results.
Juravich: And you also remind people in your article, you say, you know, parents talking to your kids and explaining that, you know make eye contact, use gestures, use body language. So, which, I mean, it is sad to say, but you have to remind people to make eye contact with their kids, yeah.
Abrahams: Oh, absolutely. You know, we're we're used to looking away. We're distracted. You know we have lots of things going on. We connect through the face to face interaction. Square your shoulders to somebody. Look people in the eye.
Talk to your kids or the kids in your lives about the difference of what just happened in a communication. Wouldn't it be great if the end of an interaction you you visit family friends and on your drive home you talk about not just how great it was to interact but the interaction itself.
Wasn't it really cool how our friend paraphrased what you said, so you really felt like you were heard. Calling that stuff out makes a huge difference. It's a way of learning and appreciating that doesn't happen in the classroom, doesn't happened in textbooks. And that's how we become better at our communication.
Juravich: Well, I have a new one for you that you can add to your next next list. Next time you make this list. Our board operator, Cam, who is many decades younger than me, he said that he installed a landline at his house and has been calling family each day. So because you have to call. Right. And so what do you think of that calling on a land?
Abrahams: I think well one having a landlines fantastic. I still have one as well. But but yes, no, and I think anything that causes you to reach out to somebody I mean cam I'm gonna up your game one more write a postcard or a letter send it that way I mean really take the time
Juravich: He's game, he's game. There we go.
Abrahams: There we go, yeah, but anything that anything that causes you to slow down think intentionally about what you're going to say. You know to actually dial the phone and have the interaction is very different than just typing an emoji into a chat. So I love the idea anything that slows us down and forces us to think about our communication is gonna help us do it better
Juravich: I could see myself if I'm talking on a landline being more intentional about talking to someone, right, rather than just being transactional on a cell phone. All right. I can see it. I'm not saying I'm getting a land line, but I did want to talk to you for a few minutes before we run out of time about debate, because we see a lot of people being quite explosive on social media, our political leaders included, and so many of our conversations are starting out like arguments or they feel like personal attacks rather than just listening to each other. So what are your thoughts on this like argumentative communication style that we're seeing?
Abrahams: Yeah, it's reinforced and rewarded through social media and other types of media. The best communication comes from connection and collaboration, so I encourage my MBA students and anybody I interact with is to lead with inquiry.
Ask questions. Doesn't mean you're agreeing when somebody responds, but ask a question, demonstrate you've listened and heard them, and then we can have a meaningful conversation. If I'm just showing my point of view or sharing my point view, and you're just sharing your point of you.
Is that true communication? I'm not sure. That's just broadcasting information. So start with inquiry, demonstrate listening. A great way to do that is simply paraphrase what you've heard. Paraphrasing doesn't mean agreement. It just means understanding.
It allows you to verify what you heard. And then you can have a meaningful conversation. That's where collaboration happens. That's what connection happens. That's how trust is built. If I'm just obloviating and positioning myself versus you. We're not really achieving the goal of communication, which is to connect.
Juravich: Do you think that our ability to debate has been weakening? Because I feel like everyone feels attacked. If you disagree, then you suddenly feel attacked, and you double down sometimes. But have we lost the ability to properly debate?
Abrahams: I think we are at risk of losing the ability to appreciate and understand and articulate a position against someone else. This nonprofit I shared that I'm on the board of is all about teaching kids debate skills, how to really listen, how to position an argument, how understand somebody else's point of view. That's what's critical and debate serves that purpose. And I think if all we're doing is yelling at each other, we're not having a conversation.
Juravich: Tell me a little bit more about this non-profit, since you've mentioned it twice. Well, it's, yeah. What do you do?
Abrahams: Yeah, so it's not just here in Northern California. It's across the US. It's called Urban Debate Leagues. They teach public speaking and debate skills in communities where those skills might not exist in schools. Here in Silicon Valley, where I exist, we call it the Silicon Valley Urban Debates League.
It is a place where kids can come after school or as part of their curriculum to learn evidence and communication, learn how to appreciate and position an argument. And there are competitions in speech and debate, just like there are competition in tennis and football and basketball, and students go in and compete, and that's a way to hone and develop their skills.
And these urban debate leagues across the U.S. are all non-profit, and they all could benefit from support, but they certainly benefit the students. Who would have thought, Amy, that if you teach kids critical thinking and communication, they're gonna do better. And that's exactly what this non-profit helps with.
Juravich: Well, and another thing just to end on another thing that I think I think it will help is the banning of cell phones from schools because I've heard anecdotally from teachers that kids are talking to each other more, especially at lunchtime.
Abrahams: Yeah, so again, I think there are advantages and disadvantages to cell phones on campus. I think having rules around when they can be used and how they can used is very important to do. In the classes I have, I don't allow students to use their phones except for very specific assignments where the phone actually is helping us learn. But to ban them outright, I'm torn on that. But certainly having control and expectations around them and helping students understand that the phone is a distraction device, as well as a tool that can help them.
Juravich: We've been talking about how to improve our communication with Matt Abrahams, lecturer in organizational behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. And he recently wrote an article that's titled, "Why Young People Are Struggling to Communicate." He also hosts the podcast, "Think Fast, Talk Smart," and he's the author of a couple of books on communication. Thank you so much for your time today, Matt.
Abrahams: Amy, thank you for highlighting this important issue. All the best.
Juravich: And coming up, we're gonna talk with the associate director of Mental Health America of Ohio about improving our communication for our mental health. That is When All Sides Continues on 89.7 NPR News.
You're listening to All Sides, I'm your host Amy Juravich. Navigating sensitive topics and confronting others is difficult, but an essential skill in all facets of life, whether it's with family, friends, or in the workplace. How do we get over the fear of having difficult conversations?
Joining us now is Maggie Hallett, Associate Director for Mental Health America of Ohio and Licensed Professional Counselor. Welcome back to All Sides, Maggie. So our last guest spoke about how younger generations are struggling to communicate. In your experience, do you agree with them? Do you think younger people are struggling to communicate?
Maggie Hallett: I would say they communicate differently. That's for sure. You know, it's hard to know if they're struggling to communicate because they're communicating all the time, nonstop. But are they communicating in a meaningful way? You know that's harder to understand.
And I'm just thinking about this right now as a mom of a 15 year old where I know he's talking to his friends all day, every day. All the time. But how, you know. Helpful, beneficial, fruitful are those conversations. How good is he at, you know, being able to stand up for himself, recognize, you now, where he's not communicated well. You know, those things are just, because we are not hearing the conversations since it's all happening via text.
Juravich: Yeah, I think our previous guest, Matt Abrahams, is more talking about that actual dialog, right? Not texting dialog, which to your point is true. That is a form of communication. They are communicating. They're probably talking more than we when we used to when we were younger, but it's not an actual dialog and an actual interaction. What do you think of that? Well, I guess it is an actual interaction. It's not spoken word.
Hallett: You know, sometimes I think all people are a little bit braver to say what they want to say when they're writing it, you know, when they are not looking somebody in the eye. And so I think there's benefit to that too. I think it's just as they grow, learning how to discern when a conversation needs to happen in person, you now, when you need to be face to face with somebody.
But if you could be brave and say the hard things, first, you know, electronically, and then follow up with I think we need to talk about this. You know, I think there's multiple ways to be a good communicator.
Juravich: We're all guilty of the sending an email instead of talking to the person face-to-face right? Yeah, right. What do you think causes poor communication skills in the younger generation?
Hallett: You know, I think modeling, you know, I think they see how adults communicate and listening to the last guest, you know, and talking about debate. When some of our role models, I guess, quote unquote, are not communicating well, that's what they're seeing.
And technology, we just don't know. All of us who are raising kids right now are learning on the fly. And so, none of us really know the best way to approach all of this. New ideas, new thoughts, new opinions about communication are coming out all of the time. So I don't know, I think us communicating well, them being able to see it and just reinforcing the importance of knowing how to have conversations with people face to face.
Juravich: When we were talking about doing this topic for the show, we were taking about that it feels like some people are more fearful to bring up things that concern them. Like they don't wanna cause conflict, maybe they don't wanna bring it up. Where do you think that fear stems from?
Hallett: Losing a relationship. I think you know, we're a relation relationship changing and especially with kids I mean their friendships are are so important to them And so if they fear that saying something hard is gonna cause a rift in the relationship It's probably easier for them to not have the conversation Than to you know try to fix it
Juravich: Well, in your position as a counselor and with the organization you work for, would you encourage the conversation though? Is it important to talk about the topic rather than ignore it?
Hallett: Oh, absolutely. I mean, otherwise it just festers. Yeah. It gets bigger. You know, and when we don't talk about something, all the little things pile up. And so then when a conversation does happen, it's usually not just about the conversation at hand. It's about everything else that wasn't discussed up until that moment too.
Juravich: Why is it important to be able to speak about sensitive topics? Besides, I mean, you mentioned the festering and the worry about it, but is it because you could get relief on the back end?
Hallett: Oh, I mean, I think that's one of them. I think it's important for you to feel heard and understood. You want people to know where you're coming from and why, but that's really a skill. And going into all conversations or all difficult conversations in particular, I think it is important to, if you have the time, if you're the one that's planning to bring up the conversation versus it being brought to you.
You think about what your goal is. Is your goal to maintain the relationship? Is your goals to be clear about something, to say no to something? What's the priority? And then you kind of have to think about how to approach the conversation based on that.
Juravich: I feel like, I mean, I don't know if you agree or most people would think that you get better at navigating difficult conversations the older you are, if you, I'm not sure if that's true or if you just have more life experience to be able to give the conversation a try. Do you think that's true?
Hallett: I would say practice makes, well, not perfect, but better. Yeah. It's really scary. It's scary to be vulnerable and that's usually what difficult conversations entail. And so I would not necessarily because there's a lot of older people who never had the hard conversations and their family dynamics. It was just, you know, we don't talk about it. And so... I think that people who practice more are the ones who are better at it.
Juravich: Okay, so it's maybe people who have taken the time to see a therapist or a counselor and learn more about it, right?
Hallett: And, you know, we're people with a deeper level of self-awareness, you know, what am I bringing to this conversation? What are my triggers? You know, how am I going to respond? And you know the gentleman before me when he was talking about, you know, have it taking a beat or having a moment before responding.
In therapy we always call it practicing the pause. But I think having a hard conversation is one thing, but saying things that you regret and that you have guilt or shame around, I mean, those two feelings are two of the most difficult to deal with. So if you are able to not add those to the conversation or walk away with those, you know, all the better.
Juravich: You're listening to All Sides on 89.7 NPR News.
We're talking about how to navigate difficult conversations with Maggie Hallett, Associate Director for Mental Health America of Ohio and Licensed Professional Counselor. So you've already mentioned a couple of tips, but let's talk about some tips for having a difficult conversation. How should we approach it when we know it's going to be a difficult conversation? You said come prepared.
Hallett: If you're the one initiating the conversation or you know that this conversation is going to happen, think about what your goal is for the conversation. With some family members in particular, the goal might be just to maintain the relationship. That might be priority number one.
If you are talking to your boss, the goal may be different. It might be for them to understand why you had made a decision that you did or how you see something that you are working on moving forward. So, or you might need something from them and how to go about doing that.
So I think going into a conversation with a goal in mind is important. Active listening, if you only go in waiting for your turn to talk, instead of hearing what they're supposed to say, it completely shuts down the ability to connect. And so it's hard, even in, you know, coming here and thinking, you try to prepare for a conversation like this and think of all the things you wanna say, but. If I'm not listening to you and listening to your questions and practicing my pause and being thoughtful about it, it's not gonna be as robust of a conversation.
Juravich: You said to make sure you have a goal for how you want it to end, but that other person might have a different goal, or the exact opposite goal, right? So what do you do then whenever you might not get to your goal?
Hallett: Yeah, I mean, I think one thing that is really, really hard for all of us is to do what you can and also let go of what you expect and how you expect them to respond. You have no control over that. And you don't always know what they're bringing to the conversation, what they are, you know, if this could be tapping into something that's bigger than what's actually at hand.
And that's hard, that's for all of us, but if you can walk away from a conversation feeling like you got your point across, you didn't say anything hurtful, you heard what the other person said, regardless of if it didn't turn out exactly as you wanted it to, it still wasn't an unsuccessful conversation.
Juravich: Oh, yeah, that's probably important for people to hear, even if you didn't get your goal. It doesn't mean it wasn't successful.
Hallett: It means that, I mean, you could still have communicated as best as you could and you might not get what you want, but you aren't walking away necessarily feeling bad about how you handled it.
Juravich: We mentioned this earlier. Are there sometimes conversations that are not worth having? Can you think of times when maybe you've told a client, like, maybe it's best not to bring it up anymore?
Hallett: Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of times when, you know, you're being invited to an argument for argument's sake, or it's a rehashing of something over and over again, that you both are solidly in your sides of it. And, you know, in those situations, that's when, depending on what the relationship is, you might want to prioritize the relationship and choose not to engage in that. It's just going to erode the relationship otherwise.
Juravich: I was gonna ask you if you can think of some examples of that. I mean, what comes to mind for me is politics, right? That that's just what pops into my mind because if you and your parents wholeheartedly disagree and you're not gonna change each other's minds. You can either not have a relationship or just agree to not have the difficult conversation.
Hallett: It's really hard these days too, because so much of it is so deeply personal. And so you can feel like if I don't have this conversation, I'm not being true to myself for standing up for what I believe in or they're not seeing.
Juravich: But is that worth terminating a relationship over?
Hallett: I don't know. I think each situation is so unique that I think that's part of what you're trying to discern individually before you go into the conversation.
Juravich: How can we steer away from those conversations while still being respectful? So, you know how you said that if you start the conversation, like, but what if you're on the receiving end, someone comes to you and they are gonna start this difficult conversation and you want to stop it.
Hallett: Yeah, not prepared for that. I think, you know, just being honest about where you are, you know hey, I wasn't really planning on talking about that right now. You know, we're in the middle of Thanksgiving. And if this is really important for you to talk about, can we like schedule a time to do it some other time so I feel more prepared and I don't feel on edge about it. Make it about yourself, make it about your feelings. And that's that's relatable to say, I hear you, I can tell you wanna talk about this, but I'm not in a place to do that right now.
Juravich: Do you ever recommend getting advice from like AI, ChatGPT, for talking points or like to practice a difficult conversation or anything like that?
Hallett: I mean, I think it's the way we're moving. You haven't tried it yet. This all feels so new to me. I haven't try it for that. We use it at work sometimes to help us form better paragraphs. It helps us communicate for sure, usually in writing, but I could definitely. My son uses ChatGPT for everything.
It's his doctor, it's his... He probably uses it for how to get what he wants in the house too. He's using it to help debate you. Yes, for sure. I mean, and he's a litigator. So yeah, I think that it could be helpful. It's just moving so fast and you hear about some really scary things when it comes to ChatGPT guiding on any type of interpersonal relationships. And so I would caution, caution, maybe put a pause.
Juravich: Yeah, maybe it's not ready yet. I feel like I've had numerous shows where I've talked about people developing relationships with AI. And so I can see it being used both ways, to help you better your real life relationships, but also taking the place of that.
Hallett: Well, and we all know ChatGPT, or any of the AIs, they tell you sort of what you want to hear. They're first on your side unless you ask them to be more discerning or critical. And so they might not give you the best advice because they're looking at it only probably from your perspective or telling you what you wanna hear.
Juravich: They're they're being fed by you. Yeah, right. So it's hard to play devil's advocate whenever you're being from one side, right? Yeah. All right. So what what do you want to end on with advice for navigating difficult conversations no matter your age if it's not not using AI. Let's talk about in person.
Hallett: Yeah. I think most importantly, trying to let go of somebody else's reaction, controlling what you can control in the conversation. Strive to practice the pause if you need to so you don't say anything that is going to make you feel bad after the conversation and be as prepared as you can while still giving the other person plenty of time to you know, say what they need to say to you.
Juravich: Way to teach this? Could we, is it that you, does everyone need to be seeing a therapist, right?
Hallett: I mean, you know, I think there's lots of ways we work at it as a leader at work. You know, we try to model it. We try to to, you have as many hard conversations as possible, same at home. So I think the more skilled adults can be, then you know the better we can teach the younger generations to do it.
Juravich: We've been talking about how to navigate difficult conversations with Maggie Hallett, Associate Director for Mental Health America of Ohio and a licensed professional counselor. Thank you so much for your time today, Maggie. Thank you for having me.
And coming up, we're going to talk with a professor in OSU's Center for Ethics and Human Value about how improve our dialog. That's when All Sides continues on 89.7 NPR News.
...
Juravich: You're listening to All Sides. I'm your host, Amy Juravich. Not every conversation about a difficult topic is a debate or an argument. As political polarization increases and arguments and debates dominate our communication, how do we relearn the art of dialog?
Joining us now is Aaron Yarmel, Associate Director of the Center for Ethics and Human Values at Ohio State University. He leads efforts on dialog facilitation on campus. Welcome to All Sides, Aaron.
Aaron Yarmel: So good to be here. Thanks for having me.
Juravich: So your center is described as a hub for rigorous and respectful discussion on the ethical challenges that shape our university and our broader community. So can you tell us about some of the work that you do? What does the Center for Ethics and Human Values try to do every day?
Yarmel: So CEHV has a long history of programming that tackles ethical issues in different ways. So one of them is our COMPAS program. Stands for Conversations on Morality, Politics, and Society. And for- Oh, that's a good acronym. Yeah, isn't it fun? Yeah.
We also have a class called the COMPAS class. That's one of my favorite classes to teach. But what we do is every year we pick a different ethically challenging issue. And we have a series of events that go into it. So this year we talked about ethical issues involving food. We've done ones involving technology. We've the environment, immigration, pretty much anything.
And what's really exciting about that program is that we have a long history of not shying away from challenging topics, but instead bring people in who have expertise and different disciplinary backgrounds and different perspectives who can talk about it.
Another one of our programs is the CARE program, Conversations About Research Ethics. What we do there is we train people in research ethics that can help them prepare for different grant-funded projects. But we also bring in speakers who provide a variety of different perspectives on ethical challenges that arise in the context of research. Everything from animal experimentation to working with vulnerable populations.
And then our civil discourse program is the one that, over the last probably two or three years, I've been probably the most involved in. And what that does is it does programming all across campus and works with virtually every single stakeholder group of our university to facilitate dialogs about challenging topics, to train people on how to have these dialogs about challenging topic and to also train students to do all of those things.
So one of our programs that's within the Civil Discourse for Citizenship program is our Civil Discourse Fellows program. And my colleague Catherine Joyce is the director of that. What that does is it actually takes undergraduate students, trains them to be civil discourse fellows, so they learn how to facilitate conversations about challenging topics. Then they invite speakers to come and present two different perspectives about a challenging topic. Then they moderate a discussion in front of an audience. So we do a lot of exciting stuff, yeah.
Juravich: Yeah. Tell me about the difference between what you just described. Is it a debate or is it a dialog?
Yarmel: That's such a good question. So when I think about debate, what I think is a conversation where the goal is to either convince your opponent that you're right or to convince an audience that you are right and that your opponent is wrong. And so what that does is it trains you to see the person you're talking to as an obstacle to be overcome as opposed to a partner with whom to collaborate.
And what we do when we're bringing in different perspectives is that we're not trying to set it up as a contest to see who can persuade an audience to... Like agree with them. What we do instead is we see it as two people who have expertise about a topic, who can engage together in the mutual pursuit of better answers to tough questions.
And so I'll give you an example that I love reflecting on. We did an event a couple of years ago was a student moderated civil discourse forum about the question, should trans women be able to compete in women's sports? I think the framing was slightly different, but that was essentially the gist of the conversation.
And we brought in people who genuinely disagreed about it. But we didn't pitch it as a debate where it was trying to see which side can defeat the other. It was what are the most thoughtful perspectives that we could find about a topic and what questions can we ask to try to get all those perspectives to be in the same place as everybody moves towards better answers about a question that is really important to our society.
Juravich: Did you solve it?
Yarmel: I don't think we solved it, but I think it was a step forward in terms of the model that I think we should be using.
Juravich: Yeah. Okay. So are you, would you advocate that high schools should get rid of their debate clubs and turn them into dialog clubs or discourse clubs?
Yarmel: So I'm going to say something that might... Okay, so first what I'll say is that I enjoyed, I did LD debate when I was in high school. I also studied liberal debate when was in college. And I think that there is a pedagogical value in debate, which is that it teaches you how to sharpen your presentation skills and also how to be just absolutely targeted in critiquing a perspective.
And I that there's a lot of critical thinking skills that are taught through debate. I do think that and this is where I'm gonna say something that is gonna be a little bit controversial. I think Ethics Bowl is a far superior model to debate.
Juravich: Ethics Bowl. OK, I'm not as familiar with that one. Yeah, Ethics.
Yarmel: Yeah, Ethics Bowl is amazing. So Ethics Bowl is something where you get a team, and this is at the high school level, also the college level. And you're training, you're studying a bunch of different ethically challenging cases. Then when you get into the competition, the judge gives you a question, gives your team a question.
You have to work together as your team to figure out what perspective you want to put forward about that, like what answer you want to give to the question. You present your answer. The other team then asks you questions about it. Some of those questions are critical. But if you just go in and try to attack the other team as hard as you can, you're not gonna get full points. Part of what you're trying to do is to highlight what the other did well.
And then after that, the judges ask you questions, then you respond to the judge's questions. And so I see Ethics Bowl as a model that does everything that I want debate to do, but it frames it in a more collaborative way. And so, I actually will say on the radio, I think Ethics Bowl is superior to debate, even though I do think that there is some pedagogical value in debate.
Juravich: That's interesting. Yeah, that sounds like the Ethics Bowl sounds like model UN combined with debate, but then changed, like it mixed up in a bowl.
Yarmel: Yeah, I think there's lots of different influences.
Juravich: Yeah. So, over the past few years that you have been working with the Center and you said you've been leading, you know, the dialog and the civil discourse more recently, what's been your main concern about the way the students you're working with on campus, or I guess the staff as well, are communicating? What's your biggest concern whenever you see them trying to have dialog.
Yarmel: Yeah, such a good question. I actually want to mention something that your last guest talked about, so that she had some really brilliant points that tie into this. She was talking about how you gotta get clear about your goals. She was talk about how when you go into a conversation, some people are just trying to get stuff off their chest, others are looking for cathartic release.
Some people are looking for a more therapeutic process, others want dialog, and some people just want a debate, they're looking for a contest. And the biggest thing I see that goes wrong is that people go into a conversation with conflicting goals. The mistake I think they make is they don't stop to say, what do we actually want to accomplish in this conversation?
The other mistake I thing they make is that they don't really see dialog in the style that I do it as an option. Because what we're trained to do is to go into one of two extremes. We either go into debate mode where we're engaging with the clash of ideas but we're trying to defeat somebody else. Or we go into more of like a therapeutic sharing session that I see in other practices like circling or non-violent communication.
I think that has a place. I think there's like a huge value to it. But what's missed in that approach is the critical stuff. Where once we get our perspectives out there, once we have this beautiful, empathetic sharing of perspectives, we learn to really see one another. We have to take the next steps to critique the contents of the perspectives that we've just shared.
So the two mistakes I see people are making are that they don't coordinate their perspectives or had a time about our goals. And they don't really see inquiry dialog, which is the style of dialog that I do, as an option that can actually get them what they like about these other two approaches but without the disadvantages.
Juravich: You're listening to All Sides on 89.7 NPR News.
We're talking about navigating difficult conversations with Associate Director of the Center for Ethics and Human Values at Ohio State University, and that is Aaron Yarmel. Okay, so as I said, every professor loves a good acronym list. So you have the Four Cs of Civic Discourse. So your four C's are be curious, be charitable. Be conscientious and be constructive. We don't have time to get through all four Cs. Pick your favorite C.
Yarmel: Cool, so yeah, the Four Cs of Civil Discourse, if you wanna learn more about them, we have like an online training that's free for anybody. So this doesn't need to be your only exposure. I highly encourage you to do that. And if you want more information about it, if you think that this could be useful for your company or your organization, reach out to me. I love doing workshops outside of Ohio State even.
But I'll talk about Be Curious. I think that Be Curious is the hardest one to do both emotionally and also cognitively. And I'm gonna ask you a question. What is a really tough? Like topic for you to talk about.
Juravich: Well, I would say politics because I, as a journalist, am trying to remain neutral and I have a lot of people with a lot opinions talking to me all the time.
Yarmel: Excellent, so you have like a structural barrier. It's like in your career, you need to be able to remain neutral. Yes. Yeah, so I can, yeah.
Juravich: And I can't get upset over, you know, if I personally disagree with someone, I can do that on the radio. You have to.
Yarmel: Right. You have to just like remain neutral and calm and just explore the perspective. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, so you're probably...
Juravich: Are you gonna fix me?
Yarmel: I mean, I don't know, I feel like your, the move I just made failed because you're too good at this already because you are a professional radio host. But imagine if you had said something like war. Imagine that if you're thinking about like what's going on in Iran right now and that's like a challenging thing to talk about because of how emotionally deep it is.
I think for a lot of people who aren't professional journalists, they'll have something come up in their lives where it's hard to talk. About, one thing that makes it hard to talk about is that when I'm engaging with you in a debate mode or a persuasion mode. What's happening is that I can protect myself because I'm not actually taking anything personal to me, handing it to you and asking you to comment on it.
What I'm doing instead is keeping all that stuff behind me and then just fighting you and attacking your ideas. And I don't actually have to put myself in the vulnerable position of having something potentially shift. And I think that's what makes Be Curious emotionally difficult.
Be Curious is about assuming you have something to learn from somebody who you disagree with about one of these really challenging topics. It's also cognitively difficult because of something we do, which is to move towards cognitive closure. So when I'm faced with an ambiguous stimulus, and this is a true thing of humanity, what we do is we look for an interpretation.
We don't just sit there in the space of ambiguity and not knowing and say, I might know what this person means. And there's value in that because if I never came up with an interpretation of what your words mean, I can never communicate with you, I never understand you. But the danger is that we're often wrong in our interpretations of what somebody else means.
And when you combine that with the emotional difficulty I just described, which is that it feels easier to be in debate mode than inquiry dialog mode, you get this move towards misrepresenting other people's points of view. And so what I tell people to do is that you need, when somebody is talking to you, especially if you disagree with them, you need to start by telling yourself, I might not know what this person means. And just keep repeating it until you can actually enter the space of ambivalence. And then you can take the next steps towards trying to figure out what they actually mean.
Juravich: Well, and I think that what you asked me didn't work because you picked your favorite C as being be curious. And that is basically my job description. Exactly. I have to be curious for a living. So not many people are like that. So how do you teach teach others to be curious? Because some people just innately don't ask questions. I mean, I have people in my life where I could sit and have a dinner the entire time and I ask all the questions, right? Because some people are just not inherently curious. How do you develop that in someone?
Yarmel: Yeah, so what I would do is I would try to find a puzzle that actually means something to them. So from what you've said, I imagine that one puzzle that you face is asking, how can I be true to myself and my own convictions while still maintain the kind of neutrality to do my job well? And that's something that I face too as a dialog facilitator.
And so if I was trying to get you to be curious, what I'd do is, I would think about that question and I'd want to see if I could get you to have a conversation about it, about the extent to which authenticity is possible while you're doing the job of a journalist where you need to hold back on expressing all of your views. And I would do that with anybody.
So what I do is I just listen to them until they share something that I see as like a ramp into a conversation. And then what I'd do is invite them to enter that ramp and now we're on the highway, we're moving at the speed of a dialog. I use the word ramp very intentionally because what I think about are messy entrance ramps to a highway where you get a sign saying to go one way and then there's construction and then a million different signs point you in different directions.
That's not gonna be something that lets you into a dialog and often when people ask questions, their questions are as messy as the worst ramps I've ever seen in the state of Kentucky. But when you can find what somebody actually cares about and offer a gentle ramp that can get them up to speed, you're suddenly like now they see the curiosity.
Juravich: So we only have about a minute left, but where are you gonna go with this? Because Ohio State is leaning into AI a lot. Are you, is that your next step? Are you gonna use that in some of your dialogs?
Yarmel: There's some ways I've experimented with AI very cautiously. Overall, I'm very concerned about the way that AI is going to fundamentally degrade our epistemic environment and the ways that it's degrading interpersonal relationships as people move more and more in the direction of replacing human connection with AI. I see it as one of the biggest threats we've ever faced in terms of having a social order and being able to trust information.
That said, I am cautiously experimenting with some ways of using AI to help people explore what their positions are about a topic before a dialog starts. And a paper that I just gotta revise and resubmit on. So I'm still sorting out exactly what my views are about that.
But I would say that I'm very terrified about the way that AI is going to, I think, fundamentally disrupt every aspect of our society, without exception. Um, but I'm also cautiously exploring some ways that we could use it to make dialog better.
Juravich: Maybe use it for good instead of evil.
Yarmel: I'd like, yeah.
Juravich: Okay, we've been talking with Aaron Yarmel, associate director for the Center of Ethics and Human Values at Ohio State University. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Yarmel: Thank you for having me.
Juravich: This has been All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. I'm Amy Juravich.