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(Portuguese) I want to tell you

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why I'm interested in listening.

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When I was 17 years old,

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I started to suffer
from a pain in my throat.

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Psychiatrists called it globus hystericus,

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completely psychosomatic.

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Eventually I developed depressions,

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and even considered suicide,
and I could not relax.

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At the age of 25 when I tried yoga,

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I felt as if somebody was putting
a nail into my throat here

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and it was coming out
from the other side.

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So I learned to cope with the pain

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by working many hours
and ignoring what was going on inside,

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so I couldn't feel anything
from here down.

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And in this way,
I was able to raise a family,

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succeed in my career,

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and things were as if they were OK,

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until by the age of 46.

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I was hit by a crisis

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that was sparked by a consultant

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using questions
from an appreciative inquiry.

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She asked:

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"When were the relationships
between men and women ideal?

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And could you please tell us a story

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about a moment at work
in which you felt full of life?"

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I was stunned.

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First, I realized how much
little joy I had in my life,

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and second, I realized that answering
this question is changing me,

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thanks to somebody listening to me.

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Then I allowed myself
to try a variety of things

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such as: massage therapy, psychodrama,

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storytelling classes, voice classes,

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Zen Buddhism workshops,

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and more recently
dialectical behavior therapy

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and things started to change for me.

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First I could feel the pain again
but I didn't run away from it.

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Eventually I even started to feel anxiety,

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which I didn't know 
what it was until that age.

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But later on, I won some moments
of tranquility, quietness,

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and moments of joy.

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And I started to ask myself,
"What made it possible?"

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And my answer was that I was so lucky

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as to raise myself a village of people
who would listen to me.

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So, then I decided to research listening.

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And today I would like to share
with you the results of this research.

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So, I first looked
in the professional literature

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in my field of management
and organizational behavior,

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and in one top journal,
out of 3,000 papers,

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I found zero discussing listening.

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In other top journal,

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out of 4,000 papers,
two discussed listening.

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And while it reflects something

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about the disinterest
of researchers in listening,

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I think it reflects the disinterest
of humans in listening.

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Watch with me this graph.

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This shows what people
are searching in Google

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from 2004 until 2015.

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The red is the amount
of searches for the word "talking",

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and the blue is for "listening".

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This is what people are interested in.

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And you speaking Portuguese
do not have to worry about

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(Português) "talking" in red
versus (Português) "listening" in blue.

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So I started to look at what theories
exist out there about listening


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and I'll show you three,

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starting with the idea

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that, actually, the listener dictates
the speaker's speech quality.

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If he's going to listen to you,
naturally you'll talk more,

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but you'll talk more coherently
and you'll tell more interesting stories.

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And if this is not enough,

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if you tell more and more
interesting stories

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you commit whatever
you have said to your memory,

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so you know more about yourself,

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such that if a child comes home
and tells the parents,

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"Oh! We did this and that in school,"

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and the parents say, "Not now. 
Have a shower and we'll have dinner,"

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the child will remember

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that whatever he or she did in school
was not that interesting.

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That will be commited to memories.

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Thus, the collection of our listeners
slowly, imperceptibly,

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changes our self-knowledge.

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If this is not enough,

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listening in a special way
could even change personality,

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a listening that is
nonjudgmental and emphatic.

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Let me explain to you how could it be
that listening would change personality.

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For that, I have to paraphrase
Pirandello from his book:

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"Uno, nessuno e centomila" or 
"One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand".

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From now I'm going to act,
so don't get scared.

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I see that you're laughing at me.


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That is fine, continue to laugh at me,

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but do me a favor.

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Do you remember the case that you had

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that in your home there was
a good friend sitting with you

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and, suddenly, a new friend 
was knocking on the door,

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and you, what did you do?

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With an ugly excuse,

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you asked the old friend to go home,

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because you were afraid

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that the old and the new friend
will not get along.

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I see that you remember this case,
so do me one more little favor.

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What do you think would have happened
if, instead of throwing out from your home

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the good old friend, and let me add,
the stand good old friend,

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you had left home for half an hour

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and, within this half an hour, 
asked them to sit in your living room?

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Tell me what do you think
would have happened

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when you came back home?

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Don't you think it's possible


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that one of them would say,
"Wow, what an interesting person!",

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and the other one, "You don't believe it!
Thank you for this introduction!"

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So, you see, that is exactly
what would have happened.

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So, now, let me ask you one more question.

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Who the hell do you think 
you kicked out from your home?

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It is not the good old friend
because he or she

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"will not get along with the new one."

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We've just established 
they'd have gotten along just fine.

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Let me tell you.


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You kicked out from home the character
that you present to the old friend

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because this one has absolutely 
nothing to do with the character

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that you want now to present
to your new friend.

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And now that we discovered
that you have two creatures in your mind,

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who knows what is the truth?

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How many creatures do you have inside?

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Is it scores, hundreds or,
perhaps more accurately, thousands?

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So, I thank to Pirandello two things.

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First: (French) Congratulations!

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Seventy years before the psychologists,

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you described the self as a multitude
and not as a unity.

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We say "my self-esteem",
as if there is one self there.

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But the second thing, Mr. Pirandello,

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what wrong did the people
attending TEDx do to you?

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And now we'll go home and think,

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"I have this character
and this character, and I'll get crazy,

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like your book's hero."

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And here comes listening.

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My understanding
is that when you really listen,

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a person will start to hear
hidden characters inside him or her.

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But not only recognize
different parts of the self,

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but it allows to build
bridges between them.

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So the elements of the self
could live together.

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So let's see what is the evidence.

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Now to collect the evidence, you know,
some people collect stamps.

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I collect scientific papers on listening.

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And every paper that has numerical data,


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I take it and put it on a pile to see
the overall picture of what we know.

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And this process is called meta-analysis.

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I've done many of those on many topics,

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and let me first summarize
to you the results.

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This is the result.

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One person listening creates
two people with benefits:

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the listener and the speaker.

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Let's go into details.

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For example,

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experiments show that a poor listener
indeed creates poor speakers.

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My own team shows that a good listener

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indeed makes speakers who have
more complex attitudes and less extreme.

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And finally, research on training
suggests that listening could be taught.

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Let's see more data.


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There is also evidence

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that good listeners are also
good performers, for example:

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physicians who listen well 
tend to have less malpractice losses;

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detectives who listen well tend
to listen to new information

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unknown to the police, from the suspect;

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salespeople who listen well sell more;

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principals who listen to their teachers,

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their students have 
better grades in school;

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and finally, supervisors who listen,
their employees have less accidents.

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Let me show you even more.


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Let me explain
this graph of meta-analysis.

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On the first line you see that I found
in this collection 13 studies

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that are accumulating information 
of almost 8,000 people

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and it suggests that if you
listen to other people,

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especially if you are the boss,
they'll think you are a leader of people,

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that you know how to lead
the people aspects in leadership.

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You will feel more psychological safety,


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you'll say what is in your mind,

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you will trust the listener.

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If it's your boss, 
you have higher job satisfaction;

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if you're a physician,
your patient will be more satisfied;

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if you're a boss, your workers
will have more commitment;

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if you work in a hospital 
and listen to your patient,

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there will be less violence 
against the staff;

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if your manager listens to you,
you'll have less burn out,

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your performance is higher and 
maybe a little bit even less depression.

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And let me tell you

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that everything
to the right of the line here

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is considered a strong
association in my field.

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Let me explain what I mean
by strong association.

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Let's take the case
of job satisfaction as an example.

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If I want to predict, to focus 
on your job satisfaction

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and I know how much you're
being paid relative to other people,

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I can slightly predict
your job satisfaction.

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But if I know whether 
your boss listens to you or not,

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I have a predictor that's 13.5 [times]
stronger and more accurate than your pay.

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Next, in my research, in past years,

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I was studying the destructive
effect of feedback on performance.

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I found out that, out of 607 experiments,
in close to 40% of them,

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after feedback, whether positive 
or negative, performance goes down.

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In 38% in listening, in contrast,

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I didn't find any evidence
that listening can cause damage,

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perhaps 5% of them showed
it doesn't produce anything effective.

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My most conservative estimate

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is that giving feedback is 7.5 times
more dangerous than just listening.

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Talking could cause you trouble.

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So, if listening is so useful,

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why is it that most of us
have difficulty in listening

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most of the time?

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I want to introduce to you
the enemies of listening.

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These are boredom, dominance, 
fear of intimacy, trauma and cost.

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Let's talk about each of them, alone.

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My approach is: let's collaborate
with the enemies of listening

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rather than fight them.

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The first enemy is boredom.


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Some people may talk your ear off,

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and you say, "I can't listen
to this anymore."

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You want to leave the room
or want them to leave.

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What can you do?

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You can ask them to tell stories.

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Instead of asking, "What's your name?",

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"Could you tell me something 
interesting about your name?"

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You can ask these people, and in general,

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after they say whatever they say,

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"and what else", and wait.

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Sometimes the boring person 
will start to tell you the truth

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or what's really important.


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And it's not going to be boring anymore.

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Next, all of us
want to gain social status.

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It's perhaps an evolutionary
force that we cannot fight.

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But we can do it in two different ways:

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we can dominate other people

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by intimidating them
and instilling fear in them

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or we can have some skill that people 
want to imitate to get from us

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and we build prestige.

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And we found that if you listen,

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you’re going to lose 
social status based on dominance,

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but you will gain social status
based on prestige.

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So it's up to you to choose
how do you want to build your status.

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And then some people,
when you try to listen to them,

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they get nervous.

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You ask them questions
that are not comfortable.

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For those people, try to talk to them
at first only about technical things.

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And then, when you listen to people,
you may start to hear horrible stories,

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about the Holocaust, about rape,

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about cancer, death, premature death.

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You may feel burdened that now you need
to help the person who shared the story,

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but you should know that often

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what the other person wants
is nothing but your listening.

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If you listen and believe it is helpful,
you will not have such burden.

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And last, listening is a cost,
it's an effort.

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So that's what I suggest to you:

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spread your eggs, don't start
right now to listen to everyone,

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it's impossible.

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Every day choose one, two people
to listen to just a little bit more.

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Then, you should respect your limitation
of how much you really can listen to.

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And to build your energy to do that,

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you will need somebody
to listen to you as well.

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Actually, everything that
I have said is not that new.

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Let me show you what is written 
in the Book of Proverbs in the Bible:

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"Counsel in the heart 
of man is like deep water,

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but a man of understanding
will draw it out."

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That is, each of us
have an advice, a counsel,

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to our own problems and challenges

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and the value of this advice

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is like water which is a source of life.

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That is, the advice that we have
for ourselves is a source of life.

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But a man or a prisioner
of understanding will throw it out.

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This is the other that will bring
our own wisdom outside.

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So, I'd like to conclude
with two dreams that I have.

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One, I wish that in 20 
or 30 years from now

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every child in every school
will learn reading, writing,

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and listening.

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And my other small wish

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is that, during the break,
the breaks here today and tomorrow,

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you will go and ask somebody around you,

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"Could you tell me
a story about good listening?"

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Enjoy it.

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(Applause)