If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look On My Face? summary

If we want to communicate well, then we have to take advantage of the natural resonance that communication has with our emotions.

We know about this resonance from scientific research. Scientists have observed that, when a monkey watches another monkey grasping an object, something phenomenal happens: the observer monkey’s brain reacts as if it were performing, not observing, the action.

If you really want to communicate a point and get a message across, a great strategy is to be clear and captivating. The trick is to be memorable, and there’s nothing more memorable than a story.

Consider how David Muller spread the news of his creation of the thinnest glass ever made. To publicize his discovery, instead of a dull and technical spiel, he told a story. He relayed how he and a graduate student stumbled upon their invention by mistake. They had been working with graphene when they noticed some “muck” in the apparatus. They thought that an air leak might’ve been responsible, but, upon closer inspection, they realized that this muck was actually incredibly thin glass.

When it comes to communication, we often over-complicate things. We try to squeeze in too much information or be too clever with our words.

It's best to go back to basics. Words aren’t everything. So much of communication is nonverbal; body language, tone of voice and facial expression can all be put to good use in communication as they all operate on deep, intuitive levels.

By now you should have the basics of communication down. But there are two final approaches that need to be mastered. First, you’ve got to remember that different audiences require different styles of communication – that is, sometimes an audience needs lots of empathy and sometimes empathy should be kept in check.

The work of Helen Riess, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, has shown just this.