Nippin Anand 0:00
Hello and welcome to embracing differences with me. Nippin Anand, and once again, I’m joined by Jenny Krasny. Some of you have may have heard we had a beautiful conversation two weeks ago. Was it Yes, two weeks ago, and we left at the stage where we said we’re going to have another conversation about conversations, another conversation about conversation. That sounds nice, and I thought it would be so nice to talk about the whole idea of the lost art of a conversation that we do not know how to have conversations. What do you think? Jenny, where should we begin? You think,

Jenny Krasny 0:41
you know, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about where we left off last time, and by naming this session the lost art of the conversation, for me, at least implies that at some point we knew how to converse. I question is, have we? Have we really? Yeah,

Nippin Anand 1:10
good point, yeah, yeah. One thing is for sure, this is where we left. I think was that how technology has destroyed the meaning of a conversation

Jenny Krasny 1:20
very much. Yeah. Much.

Nippin Anand 1:23
And that, in that sense, it’s very worrying, isn’t it, that we it’s, you see, sometimes on social media, for example, that people are arguing over things, but they never take a step back to understand another person’s world, and I think technology makes it harder,

Jenny Krasny 1:47
yeah, or is it? Is the the question we should be asking? Maybe, is it the lost art of connection? And I was pondering this today as I was reflecting on a podcast I was listening to actually, and they were saying, what was interesting is, once upon a time, we had we were very we were in living in villages and communities where we were not aware of What else was around us. So we were it, and we congregated around church, or we congregated around hunting and gathering, or we contact, you know, congregated around the tribal needs. And then we developed transport beyond just walking places, and we could travel to different places. We would bring things back and learn and suddenly seek, a desire to understand what was beyond us, so on and so forth. And over the years, technology has come in and where, once upon a time, maybe community and family connected over shared interests together because they were going through it together, be it hunting, be it praying, be it school, be it sport. Today we and even TV. Actually, I remember my husband actually describing that when television first came, not everyone could afford television, and so families open doors for other members of their community or their street to join and watch television together. So even television became a community event. And then eventually prices became more accessible to people, and before we knew it, people started having their own television so no need to knock on the neighbor’s door anymore to to watch a television show. And then over time, we are all watching our own television from our own devices, and in doing so, we’re having less need to connect with others, physically, to share a common experience, to then reflect on and communicate. And of course, then, then we had covid, and we were, we were encouraged to isolate and to minimize social interaction. And while some people certainly craved to be in the company of others, many of us, I think, learned to be very self sufficient and self reliant and very individual, and then we come back into the workplaces that are now inviting us to come back to fill their flaws with people and conversation. And that is still a phenomenon that people are struggling with. We’ve gone from a scenario of for years now, essentially having to work in isolation over the over the airwaves connect just enough, you know, to in order to exchange the information that’s required, but not not always enough to deeply feel seen and heard and understood. You. And as I’ve mentioned and now, people are struggling to coexist with others, let alone to even connect. I still marvel at places where today, even to get hello from someone in return is really difficult. I often laugh that even when I stand in front of many of my customers on a mine site, it’s 4:30am 5am I understand people don’t want to be there, but if you say hello, you at least get a grunt, you get some sort of acknowledgement that you’re in the same space as they are. And yet, in common areas at work, you’ll say hello, and people don’t even look at you. Don’t acknowledge you, look right through you. So I don’t know. I don’t know if the while, the question overall, started with the lost art of conversation, I think before we converse, we need to know and have a desire to connect. And maybe that’s the lost art of connection. Perhaps

Nippin Anand 6:02
Beautiful, beautiful. I had so much on my mind, but just listening to you, I’m reminded of so many things. You know, I frequently travel to India, and one of the things that I find interesting is that if out of the blues, you said to someone, how are you today? They would be very skeptical. They would just completely and especially if they belong to a lower social class, poor people, for example, they would be totally taken aback by your greeting. Totally it is as if, what did I do wrong? If you were talking to somebody who’s, who’s cleaning your room, for example, I just, I was just coming out of my hotel, and there was this lady, she was, she was sweeping the floor, and I just said, Good morning, and how are you? And she just looked at me, and she felt so scared, like I had she’s done some something wrong, and I’ve seen this reaction consistently, particularly in India. And I wonder if this is a sign of how indifferent we have become to each other. So when you talk about connection, we have become so indifferent to each other that the moment somebody tries to connect with another person without without a motive, it almost feels like not real. It cannot be true. There has to be something behind it. Do you do you see any of this? I do actually. So I also have the opportunity to travel for my work, and I travel to many different countries and encounter many communities, and even my most recent trip to the US, the place where I was staying, I had a number of people who looked after hospitality and cleaned the rooms, as you were alluding to. And as I was leaving the room, the person who was

Jenny Krasny 8:00
going to clean my room. Was coming in, and I said, Good morning, and thank you for clean my room. The poor lady looked at me stunned, and then started crying. And I said, are you okay? And she said, No one ever asks me that anymore. And I had the the opportunity to stay at the same premises for two weeks, and it was that first occasion where I caught her off guard, and she started crying. After that, she would wave at me from a distance, and then when I was leaving, she actually gave me a hug and and she said to me, miss, thank you for making me feel seen again. So I think, I think you’re right. I think you’re right. We know the only reason we connect with someone must be because there’s a there’s a bigger agenda than just to

Nippin Anand 9:00
connect. I was going to say that you know that the first thing we learn in social psychology of risk is to suspend your agenda. And it took me a while to get my mind around it. Say, what does that really mean? Because does that mean that I should just let go of my whatever I want from this conversation. But it took me a while to understand the real meaning of suspending the agenda, which is approaching a conversation with an open mind, and therein lies a lot of power, actually, of connecting with people. I think people can naturally sense it, that whether you have a motive behind it or not, and very quickly they realize that, you know, there’s, there’s a lot of people, when I give them a scenario like, Okay, you there’s somebody who is working without a helmet or gloves or PPE, and how would. You approach that person, they would always, most of them would start by saying, Okay, I will go and ask this person, hello. How are you? But they they cannot resist their agenda for too long. Within a couple of minutes, they have to come to the helmet or the harness or the gloves. And I think even though, when we say that, you know, I’m going to greet this person and see where the conversation goes, most of us are deeply uncomfortable with that idea. So going back to what you said, I think to have, I think being indifferent has become there’s one thing. The other thing is that my time, time is an important thing. My time is so precious, and I must do everything to maximize the use of my time. I think this is another big problem, Jenny, that that is not letting us connect with people, because in everything, there is the idea of time and efficiency,

Jenny Krasny 11:02
yeah, oh yeah. It was actually a lesson for me, a beautiful cross cultural lesson, where, probably about 15 years ago, I had the opportunity to travel to the Middle East on one of the coastal to one of the coastal countries, and I was there for a week and a half. And I was there to essentially win a deal, you know, a longer, extender, a contract. And when I arrived, I arrived with my my manager at the time and the people we were there to see every day would collect us from the hotel. They would they took us through the souk. They took us to various restaurants. They took us into their families. We ate on the floor together. We went into the field together. We looked at the tribal communities and visited various places, some touristy and some very local. And each day I thought, I need to start a conversation about about what I’m here to do. And for the first week, just over a week, there was no interest in what I was there to do on business. There was only an interest in getting to know me and me getting to know them. And it was such a foreign experience, and I felt, oh my gosh, I’m letting my manager down. I’m letting the business down. I’m not achieving what I’m there to achieve. And in fact, I couldn’t have been further from the truth. I was absolutely there to achieve what I was achieving, what I was there to achieve. Because I think, if you think about it, very few of us purchase something from someone dropping a note in our mailbox. Very few of us, very few of us purchase something because an email has turned up from somewhere unexpected, saying, buy me. We go, yeah, sure, no, that doesn’t happen. We will tend to buy when we know it’s trusted, when we know maybe our friends are using it, when it’s, you know, well reputed. And this was exactly what this customer was doing. They wanted to get to know me. They wanted to get to know me as a person. They had no interest in my qualification. They wanted to know how I grew up. They wanted to know what culture I was used to. They wanted to know whether I was someone they could trust, feel comfortable with, relate, to have a laugh with, enjoy each other’s company in silence together. And it was only the day before I left, I didn’t even bring it up, that the customer turned to me, shook my hand and said, we’ll be doing business again. Jen, and that was it. That was it. Gosh, it was a lesson. It was such a lesson around, you know, we often talk about Maslow’s hierarchy of need, whether it’s debunked and in a different order, whatever it might be, but we often talk about, you know, you know, human beings are driven with this ultimate need for the basic needs to be met, food, warmth and shelter. And I thought, I don’t think so, because why pursue food, warmth and shelter if there is no bigger, greater cause? What is the point of existing if I’m alone? And I wondered if maybe relationship is at the heart of it, a sense of belonging, and at least that’s what I walked away with without relationship. Relationship. What do we actually have?

Nippin Anand 15:03
Indeed, absolutely. I mean, you touched upon the Maslow, Maslow’s triangle. And I think this is one of the biggest delusions of our world here, that has met all its material needs and thinks that other societies are poor. They see every other society that has not met its material needs as poor. But when you live within those people, you realize that their sense of solidarity, their sense of connection, is just amazing, and they are as happy as we are, maybe perhaps much more happier than we are. They are so much more satisfied we do not understand the that what happiness looks from their end. And research after research has suggested that social resilience, social connections, is perhaps one of our Well, it is our primary need as social beings, it’s our primary need. Yes,

Jenny Krasny 16:00
I think also what what that experience taught me, and it’s been reinforced as I travel to other communities, particularly across Asia and Africa, especially where many are still holding on to their cultural norms and practices without the strong influence or obvious influence of individualistic cultures and communities, where the the preoccupation is in the here and now. It’s in the here and now. So when we sit, we sit now and we enjoy each other’s company in the now, rather than focusing what I often find when I’m interacting with people, to be present, to be in the here and now is so difficult, either people are focused on what’s happened before, and want to talk about how they’ve been hurt and the pain they’re going through and how someone wronged them and their family and decades ago. So either they’re in the past or they’re so worried about the future and what will happen in the future that we’re missing the now, and we’re potentially taking away the opportunity to connect, to just connect and enjoy the moment.

Nippin Anand 17:26
Yeah, such a great point. And, you know, Jenny, just to add to that, the other thing that I see is that the constant urge to do something, that we should always be productive. We should be doing something in the way we even greet each other in the Western world, we proudly say we are busy or not. Just once, we actually say Busy, busy. And I go to other parts of the world, and the greeting starts by saying, if you ask somebody you know, what are you doing today? And they say nothing. That’s chilling, and they say that very proudly. So I think one of the problems of our world is that it has become too efficient for its own sake without knowing what is it that I need to accomplish. You know, kids today, Jenny, have a problem. Have a mental health problem because parents have put them into so many activities after school. Every kid after school, almost every kid after school, spends at least two hours, three hours doing some activities. There are kids who spend their weekend doing activities, after activities. I cannot tell you how happy our children were when we went back to India in December last year, and just sitting with grandparents and doing nothing, absolutely nothing. They were the happiest moments for them. And I think there is something about this constant urge to be producing something, to becoming more efficient. Optimizing time comes in the way of making connections with people. It’s such, and this is a society where if you said that I was sitting idle, I was doing nothing, you would lose all the respect within the community. So because that’s what the culture demands, the culture demands you to be efficient. Now, we were talking about it yesterday. How interesting that in a culture where there’s a paradox here also, because in a culture where people are always doing something, on the other side, you also have cafes and bars and endless number of cafes where people actually sit and do nothing at all, and they just chat away. So what a conference, right? We don’t have we never had any such thing back home in India, we had one cafe in the town where I grew up in 1990s but now it’s all full of cafes.

Jenny Krasny 19:49
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You certainly make me think about when I when I was growing up. It’s, it’s almost a paradox, really, I grew up. In a household we’re sitting still, that’s devil’s work. We we must fill the time, because otherwise we’ll be tempted to do to do wrong. And so sitting still and reading a book and just enjoying the sunlight was not an option. I always had to be doing something. And I now think of my boys, where I encourage them to just sit there and read a book or take a walk with the dog around the block. That’s too slow for them. That’s too slow. And I You’re right. I think, I think our generations now, and we’ve certainly fed it, don’t know how to be still, so much so that my boys, they will finish something. So they’ll finish making a puzzle, they’ll finish playing a game, they’ll finish doing something. And even before whether the book has touched the bookshelf or whether the puzzle book has made its way back into the cupboard, even before contact is made, they’re like, Mom, I’m bored. But how can you be bored? Where did you have the time to get bored? I don’t understand,

Nippin Anand 21:09
yes, yes, that’s a very common phrase, right? I’m bored. I’m bored. Yeah, it’s very boring. Yeah, very hard to do. Be doing nothing at all in a society that is so efficiency driven, yeah,

Jenny Krasny 21:21
and yet, at the same time we want, we want our employees and our people to be innovative, to be creative. And of course, when, when do the best ideas happen, not when we’re doing, you know, there was, there’s a lot of research in the area of the AHA, you know, the aha moment. And no employer wants to hear this. But when, when you ask, and these researchers have asked entrepreneurs and other such people, when has your best idea happened? Never, ever in nine to five or seven to two or whatever, someone’s work hours are never in the work hours. They’re either happening when someone’s going for a run, when someone’s in the shower, when someone’s on the toilet, when someone’s doing something other than being productive, that’s when the aha moment happens. The brain needs stillness, not only to process and connect and absorb and but it also needs it to create the AHA, to create the next big idea. And so on one hand, the workplace craves it. On the other hand, they also reward busyness. And so how do you create both?

Nippin Anand 22:45
Yeah, yeah, it’s a very difficult one. And you know, especially for people who are who have bought into this narrative that if I don’t look busy, then I’ll be gone. You know, a lot of people suffer from imposter syndrome in this part of the world, and it’s kind of expected in the society to look busy. So if you’re having a conversation, a water cooler conversation, or just having a conversation, sometimes people feel guilty about it, that I should be deemed seen doing something. It’s very it’s very sad, actually, is that a conversation is not seen as doing something. It’s not seen as a productive thing. I think it’s the I don’t know, maybe we can debate the idea of product, what is productive, but it’s one of the best moments of being a human person, is to have a conversation with someone the best joys of life actually come from you know, we often start with these things by asking a question, what would you like to share? It’s amazing what people come up with in a conversation.

Jenny Krasny 23:57
Yeah,

Nippin Anand 23:59
but that’s not productive. You very quickly have to come down to, I want to share that I am the CEO of the company I represent, and this is my rank experience, and this is how, this is what I’m here for, to make the world a better place, or whatever, to create zero harm. If you don’t say that, then you’re not you’re not seen as someone who’s making an impact in the meeting. Oh, well, there’s another word, meeting. How many meetings do we have where there is no meeting at all, there’s

Jenny Krasny 24:32
no meeting, there is no meeting. There’s the congregating in the same space. It’s about it. Yeah, it’s fascinating. You know, many, many years ago, I used to teach communication skills, and I’d often ask the question of of leaders, how much time do do they spend preparing? Preparing for conversation. And they looked at me and said, What do you mean? And I said, Well, imagine if the if your favorite football team or your favorite cricket team, or whatever your sport of choice is, imagine if your favorite team prepared as much for conversation as you do, but now in relationship prepared as much for the game they’re about to play on the weekend. How well do you think that game would go? And they all look at me and say, No, not really. Well. Said, No. So what do they do in the week? I said, well, they train. They eat a good diet, they do whatever a good athlete does, and then they bring it all to the game, but by then, they figured out who’s the team they’re playing, what strategies they need to use all of that. And so they come in with all of that, while at the same time with an open mind to the fact that maybe there’ll be a change, maybe there’ll be someone different on the team. So we need to be open to adapting as we go. And the only way we can be open to adapting is to go back to your comment earlier, of suspend some of our agenda, suspend some of our judgment, and be open to it. And it was, it’s those examples that I would begin this, the session that I would run, and then I’d say, okay, so if you would spend any time preparing for conversation, what do you plan? And they all think about, well, I need to get this item on my agenda met cool. And I said, at any point in your planning, how much time do you spend to think about what could be the agenda of the other side, because we all know and I’m guilty as charged. If my manager was to call me right now and say, Jenny, can you give me a buzz back when you’ve got a moment? I’m not going to make that phone call with a completely open mind. I’m going to be calling with this idea of, I wonder what they want to know, and then in my books, I’d be going through what haven’t What am I running behind on? What haven’t I communicated on? What excuse do I need to create? And I’m already full of an agenda before I’ve even got into the room. And so I would encourage these leaders in the planning for conversation to consider and even write down what could be the need of the other side. And they would say to me, Jenny, one, it’s difficult because they don’t stop to think about that. But two, but what if I get it wrong, and I say, so? What if you do the fact that you’ve opened your mind to the fact that that person, or those people might have an agenda that they also want to have met opens you up to listening for it, listening for something, it doesn’t matter what, but you’re now listening beyond your own need to find the moment when you can drop in your need and Clean your hands and say, I’ve met mine. So I think that’s also part of it. How do we open our mind to be open to the fact that the other side, whoever the other side is, is bringing their own agenda, and let’s explore that in order to meet, to meet, and then find a way forward.

Nippin Anand 28:39
Jenny, I had such a such a moment last last week, or maybe yeah, week. Last week, I had two people, one from Germany and one from us, and they were both doing a session with me, and we I gave them a word justice, and I asked them give me some words that come to your mind when I say the word justice. One of them from the US responded by saying all the negative things, unfair, improper, unrealistic and so on. And the other one talked about law and fairness, and that’s how it should be those kind of words and follow the rules. It turned out that the girl from the US, her father, was run over by a truck many years ago, 30 years ago, 30 years ago, he was run over by a truck, and her she was not served justice. In fact, just the opposite. The other side actually brutalized them, and it was left a very bad taste, very bad memory. And then you have the other guy on the other side from Germany, and his wife is a lawyer, actually, so he gets his words from there. You. And I’m just thinking there are two people both talking about justice, but from completely different experiences, completely different worldviews. How do you get them to talk about justice if they don’t appreciate where the other person is coming from,

Jenny Krasny 30:19
you

Nippin Anand 30:19
can be very productive, and the way we usually do it is to prove the other person wrong. You can keep talking about justice through facts, evidences, whatever, and you make sure that the other person loses. And that’s a good argument. That’s a nice way to argue. But what do you get in the end? Both sides leave even more, you know, further away from each other. But how important it is to, as you very rightly said, suspend your agenda and just listen to the other person’s meaning of justice

Jenny Krasny 30:52
and

Nippin Anand 30:53
say, what is their history, what is their background, what is their culture, what is the symbols? What is their What is it their memory, you know, what is their memory of justice, and what a beautiful connection it would make between two people, what a lifelong relationship it would create when I come to understand that, oh, my goodness, this person is coming from a place where I can’t even imagine the trauma that she has been through. But that doesn’t happen, because the whole idea of a conversation is to win, is to win and to argue,

Jenny Krasny 31:34
it’s

Nippin Anand 31:35
not about listening and understanding and broadening our perspectives. I think that’s so in Hindi, we call it vivad, which is synthesis, which is your truth and my truth. When they meet, my truth will win over your truth. It’s vivad. That’s argument. And then there is a conversation in which your truth and my truth makes for a bigger truth, which is widening our perspectives. And that’s we call Samad. So from vivad, we go to samwad. So I there’s something I always make it very, very clear that whenever I do any workshops, any any presentations, anywhere, I always say to people that I will only say to you once, if you ask me, What do I mean? But if you want to argue anymore, I will leave the thread, whether it’s social media, whether it’s a conversation, if you’re if your sole purpose is to prove me wrong, I have no interest. But if you want to get together and and just try and understand my perspective, and maybe I can understand yours, they will come out so much more better from this conversation?

Jenny Krasny 32:41
Totally, it’s you know, as you speak, we’ve used the word conversation, we’ve used the word community, we’ve used the word Connect. I’m no linguist, and I’m sure those who are listening online, absolutely please contribute. But at the start of each of those words is CO, in my mind, co means to bring together. CO, create converse, commune, connect. And so I often talk about conversation is the co creation of a new reality, which very much speaks what you were just talking about together. We co create a new reality, a new understanding together. Yeah, CO,

Nippin Anand 33:32
I don’t need to say more. This is very powerful. Where you ended this today, yes, and I think this will leave people with some room to to to just ponder about that. What is it about communication? Conversations, connections that we are missing today. How can we possibly start to bring it, start to CO, create converse, connect and communicate with each other. How can we do that? Yeah, there’s lots and lots of things that we discussed today. Is there anything else you want to say, Jenny, before we leave?

Jenny Krasny 34:12
No, I think that’s a very powerful way to end around how do we do this, in order to build what feels to be lost, and that is a community

Nippin Anand 34:24
I’m just thinking as we are speaking. Next time, let’s pick on, let’s pick on a particular story and see how the two of us view that story from an Australian perspective and from maybe an Indian and Scottish perspective, and see how far apart we are, and how do we then start to co create or Converse around that story. So other people can also take some inspirations from there to say, Okay, this is also one way of thinking about or talking about a story. And. Or an experience. Let’s take a concrete example. Next time you can think about something

Jenny Krasny 35:06
I love, it can’t wait.

Nippin Anand 35:08
Okay, let’s do that. All right. Well, thank you, Jenny, this is another wonderful conversation with you.