At Steelray, every employee attends a seminar called “Fierce Conversations,” taught by Larry Hart and based on the book by Susan Scott. We hold all these lessons to heart and firmly believe that effective communication is a pillar to great teamwork, which in turn creates excellent products, and is a baseline for our really cool software.

This TED Talk by Celeste Headlee, a radio show host, outlines the problems that prevent us from having meaningful conversations. She puts our conversational issues in a modern-day context where the polarization of our population means that every conversation can devolve into an argument, and avoiding conversations prevents essential discussions and interpersonal connections.

She points to our lack of listening, our inherent need to talk about ourselves, and our inability to ask the right type of questions, among other issues, and maps out a plan for us to overcome these obstacles. Given that we live in a highly technological society, Headlee recognizes that a significant portion of our interactions are online via a screen, not face-to-face, and this is a primary reason as to why our in-person conversation quality has degraded. However, the points she lists to make us better conversationalists apply not only to in-person conversations but online ones as well. We often subconsciously steer exchanges to our personal experiences, both on and offline, and Headlee combats this by forcing us to recognize that experiences are all individual; we very rarely know exactly how other people feel when they undergo something, and realizing this to be a better listener makes a world of difference.

Catch the video below, and maybe learn something new about conversations that can help both your personal and professional lives.