The Power of Good Conversation, with Jefferson Fisher (Part One)
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Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Mia Sorrenti.

In a time when conversations often feel more divisive and polarized than ever, knowing how to communicate effectively has never been more essential. Today's episode is part one of our recent live event with Jefferson Fisher, live at Union Chapel in London. Jefferson Fisher has built a global following by addressing these very challenges. As a trial lawyer turned communication expert, his short practical videos have helped millions master the art of effective conversation.

He joined us live on the Intelligence Squad stage in June to mark the publication of his debut book, The Next Conversation.

Fisher was speaking to award-winning broadcaster Jenny Kleeman to share his game-changing framework for transforming how we talk and, more importantly, how we listen. To hear this episode in full and ad-free, you can become an Intelligence Squared member at intelligencesquared.com forward slash membership or tap the IQ2 Extra button on Apple. Now let's join our host, Jenny, with more.

Thank you for that lovely welcome. It's wonderful to see so many of you and welcome to this Intelligence Squared event, The Power of Good Conversation with Jefferson Fisher. I am Jenny Kleeman and I'm delighted to introduce our guest tonight. Jefferson Fisher is a trial lawyer, author and

and keynote speaker. Through his practical approach to effective communication strategies, he has amassed millions of followers around the world, teaching them how to argue less and talk more. And I think many of those followers may be here tonight. It's also Jefferson's first ever visit to the UK. - So you have to... - Hi everybody. Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. - A warm British welcome. - Thank you so much. Thank you.

So I want to start with a kind of big picture because clearly you have many many online followers What inspired you to write a book? Because you all asked for it. In my entire life, I never imagined writing a book. It was never on my radar.

until I started posting my videos. And these were videos I made of how I taught my own clients on how to communicate, and my friends, when they would come to me with difficult conversations. And it wasn't until people like you would comment and say, "You need to write a book. Please write a book. Please write a book." And I thought, "Well, dang. I guess I got to write a book." And so, of course, what do you think I did? I Googled,

How do you write a book? And that was the first start of my journey. You do make...

You make communication sound very easy, and I'm saying this to you as somebody who is a broadcaster, who's a communicator for a living. You make it sound really simple, when in fact it isn't necessarily that simple. But is it something that's always come naturally to you? Have you always been a good communicator? It has come naturally to me. It is a product of my upbringing. I have two amazing parents that instilled a lot of values.

And me, my mother is very kind. My dad is very diplomatic. If anybody listened to the podcast in the first episode where we talked to my parents, you know I'm just a chip off the old block. But a lot of it is how I argue in the courtroom and how that controls in cross-examination in my life and my friends and my family. But it's something that's always been part of me that I enjoy getting to share. And it's my blessing to be able to be here and to share it with you.

In your book you write about how part of it comes from being an older brother and as a parent myself I wonder whether or not being an older brother can actually help with communication. Yeah. That many siblings find it difficult to communicate but you say that it was an asset for you being the eldest. It was. How many are the oldest child, the firstborn? Okay, then there's a lot of old souls in this room. Then you can relate.

All right, I can remember when I was about five, my sister was born. Until then, I was the only child. And my dad sat me down and said, "This is your sister. This is your sister." And that instantly just brought a sense of responsibility, a sense of teaching. And then I had two younger brothers that came along. And probably as the oldest you can relate, my siblings almost listened to me better than they did my parents.

in some sense, and it drove my parents crazy because they could say, you need to go be nice, and they would argue, and I'd say, you ought to be a little nice. They go, okay. So it's something different about being the oldest, and I've never been the free spirit. I've always been the dad of my friend group, and you go out in college, and you're always checking on your friends, and is everybody together? That's me. I wish I could change it. Actually, no, I don't. That's just how I've always been, and I love it.

So you have gone from this courtroom trial lawyer to being a global communication coach in quite a short period of time. I mean, how did this transition happen?

Well, when I first started posting my videos, I mean, I had about 800 followers. That was it. I had a friend of mine who was an attorney and he had a thousand followers. And I thought, how in the world do you ever have a thousand followers? That would be insane to have a thousand followers. And I'll never forget when I first posted one of the videos on how to communicate and I had somebody I didn't know comment on a video. And I was like, oh, a stranger commenting on my video.

or somebody who was messaging me. I was like, I have no idea. People are liking this video and it's a very odd thing. If anybody does social media, you know, it can be very nerve wracking to post. You're very worried about how it's going to be. Let me tell you, I was much more nervous when I only had 800 friends of actually people I knew versus you can post now and there's a lot of people, I don't know, if they don't like it, okay, if they do, great. So yeah, it was a wonderful process that I

I feel like I've just been hanging on as tight as I can. It's been a rocket ship, so to speak. And you're still doing it in this same lo-fi way, no fancy editing, no fancy graphics, just you and your car? It's this phone right here. Yeah, that's all it is. And people think I have fancy graphics. Let me show you the fancy graphic. You ready?

That's all it is. And so whenever I'm making a video, I'm just in the car, the same place where all of you are, and I make a video with my phone, a fancy lights, camera, or anything. Why do you think there's such an appetite for the kind of advice that you give at the moment? I think we'd all agree that we live in a world that is in desperate need of real conversation.

of actually listening to the person rather than always trying to argue against the person. We could always do a little bit more of having something to learn rather than something to prove. I don't know if it was COVID. I don't know. I don't know if it was the proliferation of we have

We're now doing Zoom, everything's long distance, you have a lot more texting, that we've just lost the art of actual conversation, face to face in some sense. And I think the videos I teach and the tips I give is helping people do that just a little bit at a time. You emphasize a lot the role of non-verbal communication and of pauses and silences, deploying those.

Is it possible to replicate that in an online setting, do you think? Yeah, you don't respond as fast as they text. I feel like in an email or a text we have this urge that we have to reply right away. If it's longer than five minutes, we have the urge to apologize. "So sorry, I'm just now seeing this."

when it's been what? It's not even been a full day. You can do a lot of pausing in the transactional communication of text or email by just putting your phone down or giving time to think about that. I think we've lost the art of actually thinking about what we wanted to say. When it was just handwritten letters, you had time to read it, look at their penmanship, actually feel it, have a stronger connection. Then you got to sit and think of how you wanted to

and craft the letter. And here we're opinion-making machines. If we have an opinion, we have to share it. Do you think we feel almost compelled to share it? That the kind of digital architecture of things prompts us to react quickly, perhaps without thinking? Yeah, it's everything that we're modeled. People like the clapbacks. They like the snarky, quick little things that you can zing at the other person that feel good in that moment. But you look at what we watch on TV.

you have the talking heads that their whole purpose is to argue. They have somebody from X party, somebody from Y party, whatever position it is in.

The views are created by the conflict. They want to hear, you've seen the headlines, so-and-so defeats so-and-so in two words or less. Or somebody slams so-and-so. It's just clickbait. They actually had no real conversation. When's the last time you posted anything on social media that actually changed someone's mind?

or something that somebody posted on social media that actually changed yours. Instead, we squabble, we fight, we comment, we hope that somebody likes it, that way we feel a little bit better, and then we go to sleep, wake up, and the day continues to go on. One of the things that Jefferson writes about really well in his book is about an awareness of how the body reacts to situations, the kind of physical dimension of difficult conversations.

Do you think part of the problem is that we think of ourselves, especially online, as if we're disembodied, as if we're just our words and not our full-bodied human selves?

We all know that people hide behind the keyboard. People put things in the YouTube comments or the TikTok comments that they would never put in front of people. They would never say it face to face because you have this sense of anonymity that you can be mysterious. And in some sense, unfortunately, it rewards the negative behavior. Somebody says something that's really mean, but somebody thinks it's funny and

And so it gets a whole lot of traction when you're always feeding the negative, which is a toxic behavior. But also that we see people as a kind of two-dimensional thing, not as somebody with a backstory who may have had a bad day, whose heart might be racing, who might be feeling a whole bunch of things that we just don't see because they're online. Yeah, what I hope with everybody here, and again, I'm very, very thankful that you're here. You don't know how much it means to me.

is that when you leave, you just leave with a few nuggets of things that you can take away that's going to improve not just your communication, but improve your life. You know the people that promise a lot of things and they never really deliver on it. The reason my videos work is because what I teach works. And they're just little bitty things that you can apply immediately. If you just change a word, you flip a sentence, you add a little bit of

Pause. It changes the outcome. And so what we want to do here today, aside from your wonderful journalism here and you're going to teach me everything, is how we become better communicators in a space where the person you see is not the person you're talking to. Rule number one of the book is say things with control.

And a big part of that is understanding that every one of us here has a struggle that we don't share with anybody. Everybody here has a hard place. Everybody here has a grief that we don't share. And if you take the time to talk to the person behind the words, rather than forcing your point, you actually look to the person behind it. We all have a depth to us. And so when you start talking conversations, you want to look to the depth.

I think a lot of people will read this book, I certainly did, with a specific person in mind. Like a co-worker or a family member, a difficult friend, someone that they have problems communicating with, that they want to be able to communicate with but they just cannot get through to them, they cannot have a conversation that doesn't become an argument.

the most common communication mistake you see that people make across all of those settings? People make the mistake of thinking what they say is exactly how it's received. If I say it, then you automatically have downloaded it the exact same way. But in reality, that's the farthest from the truth.

We say things all the time that the other person just doesn't hear. It goes either over their head or in one ear and out the other. Because it's just, it's natural. Why? Because we're thinking of what we want to think. So often a lot of struggle happens when you only push what you said.

What I like to teach is instead of pushing the, that's not what I said. What did I say? And they repeat it back to you and they try to mimic your voice. And you're like, I didn't say it like that. That's not what I said. I don't sound like that. And you're like, yes, you did. You sounded like that. Instead of pushing that time and time and time again, what I want you to get in the habit of, remember, we're going to depth. We're going to be asking the question, what did you hear? What did you hear?

Why? Because you haven't heard. You're only hearing it through your bones. Understand? You're hearing your own voice. You ever watch the video and go, I don't sound, I sound like that? This is how I sound? Because even your own voice sounds different when you actually record it. And so we often think that you said something very kind when it was actually very

Didn't sound very kind. And so anytime that you can look to the depth of the other person, anytime you can ask the question, "Well, what did you hear?" rather than trying to push your point, it's going to lead to a better conversation. And do you have examples, real-world examples, where that's happened, where people have...

expected things to be received in a certain way they haven't been and things have escalated as a consequence of that. Oh yeah, I'm, I don't know if you know this, I'm an attorney. I'm a trial attorney and if there's something that we like to do in my profession unfortunately it's just make things out of nothing. We like to argue, we like to strut, they like to assert dominance in some way that their case is better, that they're the ones that is the

best at what they do. And a lot of the times that creates a lot of conflict in and of itself because we assert our own ego. Everybody's got an ego. I got an ego. Everybody's got an ego. It is the matter of trying to make sure that when you talk in communication, you are looking for the person behind the words. So in a real world example, I've had it before where I'm talking to an opposing attorney

And we're emailing. So let's put it in a transactional sense. We're emailing. And every email I get from him, I just read is very rude. Ever emailed somebody and it feels like anytime they respond to you, you're going, golly, can this person just give me a break? Everything I say is rude. But when I pick up the phone and talk to him,

He's like, hey, Jefferson, what's going on? I mean, it couldn't be any different. He's just as happy as can be. I'm like, are you the same person who just emailed me this? Why? Because we tend to read the negative. In fact, I'd say we always read the negative. If I were to text you, let's say we were texting tonight, and I said, okay, I'm going to text you.

Who in the world gets that on their phone and goes, "Look at that." Jefferson goes, "Okay." How nice was that? That he said, "Okay." No, we always read the negative, "Okay." What kind of okay is that? Was that like an okay okay? Or like, "Okay." Or, heaven forbid, it's just K. It's just one K.

Then you know there's problems. Somebody's dead. Somebody's dead. It's probably you. But yeah, any time we get into that mode, we read in the default. We read the negative. Same thing with email. Same thing with text. And it is a very hard place to be when you're always taking things personally. It's so funny you say that because I wonder how you have...

found being in the UK where we speak the same language but we're quite different as cultures because when I get emails from editors in America they always begin "Jenny" comma and then there's a line and I think that's really quite rude. But actually I think that's just how you do things maybe. Right, that's how you read it. Dear Jenny, I was happy to receive your message but yes.

Yeah, let me tell you what, the UK editors that I have, and I love them, I know some of them are here, they write the longest emails. I'm talking, they love two things. They love a good email. They love to give you paragraphs, all right? And if there's one thing, an exclamation point, hates to see these people coming, all right? Because they love the exclamation points. They'll throw in two or three, all right?

or they love a holiday. I don't know what it is, but people in the UK, y'all love your holidays. I don't know how many times I've emailed and I get an automatic response. I don't think I've ever emailed somebody from the UK and I did not get at least one automatic response to say I'm out on holiday. I got to get me some holiday. Whatever that is, y'all love it. I'm happy for you, really. In your book,

You've got a very clear framework in your book and you know that a lot of people who are going to be reading this book and a lot of the people here are used to you giving the kind of 45-second breakdown of what your nugget of advice is. And you've given us point number one of the book, but if you were to put in a nutshell what the actionable framework of the book is, what would that nutshell be? Yeah, I... Oh, that's a great question. I put you on the spot now. That was great. That was wonderful. Let's do it. You ready?

There are people that teach you how to play an instrument, how to teach you the chords or how to press the brass in the right way. I teach you, the book teaches you

the chords to play. I tell you what notes to play. Your voice already has an instrument. You can be loud, you can be soft. You can be angry, you can be happy. You already know how to play your instrument. What I teach you in the book, I give you the notes to play. I give you the sheet music. That's the book in a nutshell.

is I give you the notes to play. And if you are actually trying to have a better conversation in your life and you follow the notes and you follow the sheet music, are we going to make this really corny? You're going to play a song that is just so beautiful. I'm kidding. You're going to have a better conversation and exchange a better life. We really are. Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody.

People up there, people around, people on the live stream too. And also, I forgot to say, you're all going to get an opportunity to ask Jefferson questions in about 15, 20 minutes. And I know that they will be direct, concise, confident and to the point.

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So one of your key bits of advice, which is kind of a bit of a revelation for me, is never win an argument. What do we lose when we try to win arguments? Yeah, when you try to win an argument, you will lose the relationship. Raise of hands, who wants to be in a relationship with somebody who always has to be right? Always has to be right, has to have the last word, seeing no hands.

It's a very lonely place to be. It's an audience of one when you're somebody who always has to be right. That's somebody who always has to win. They have to have the last word. But when you do that, what you've really won is their contempt.

Not yet, but maybe the second time you do it. Maybe the third time you do it. You lose the quality of that relationship over time because they don't want to be with you. They don't want to be communicating the same conversation of they're always feeling like they're less of themselves. What you really want is to be the first to apologize. It's always the person who says the worst thing last.

Is the one that typically has to apologize. You've also won awkward silence when you pass them down the hall. Or, heaven forbid, you live with them. And then you have to have that awkward silence when you're in the kitchen together. And you're having to scoot along the edge and not say anything. And you're having to get the dish in front of them. And you're like, you're in my way. That kind of stuff is not going to...

earn you any kind of credit and it's not going to improve your life. You don't want to win an argument. Instead, I want you to see them as something to unravel. Find the knot in your conversations and do it fast.

The reason I say fast is because the harder you pull, let's say you and I are in an argument, Jenny, and I say, no, you have to agree with me. And she says, no, you got to agree with me. And we're at an impasse. Now, what do we have? We have a not. Why? Because there's some kind of confusion, some kind of thing that we don't understand. We either don't have the understanding or acknowledgement of what's happening. And the harder we talk, what happens? The harder it is to undo the not.

You know people, and maybe even in your own life right now, that there are others that you do not talk to anymore because of a knot that is too hard to undo. There are people that haven't talked to their children. There are children who have not talked to their parents or their grandparents or that friend that you were as close as could be. But after one issue, I'm not saying you didn't have good reasons.

I'm saying there is sometimes a not to where you cannot undo it. But the quicker you get to apologizing, the quicker you even get to saying things like, "Help me understand the not. Help me undo the not. Help me get to the point here." Because as soon as you understand the person you see is not the person you're talking to, it becomes really easy to start getting objective

and start focusing on really what the actual struggle is rather than just pointing the blame and assigning blame. That's a shortcut, that's a cop-out. Stop assigning blame and start finding the issue. And this of course makes perfect sense and sounds very beautiful when you say it, Jefferson. But do we not have this desire to win? I mean, isn't it really difficult to wean yourself off the desire to win?

I mean, you just have to understand that winning is, I don't really, I get it. I like to win. Don't you like to win? Everybody likes to win. Nobody wants to lose. You have to shift the perspective of what is winning. What is winning? Having peace in your life? That's winning. Having your mental health? That's winning. Being in a place where you feel safe, secure, you feel like what is said is what is heard? That's winning. That's winning.

So it's not the verb that's the problem, it's the goal, the aim. That's what you need to change. So let's say somebody is about to embark on a difficult conversation with a partner or a co-worker or a friend. Someone, maybe someone they disagree with politically. What was the first thing they should do to prepare? How should they get ready for that conversation?

Yeah, so let's go to rule number one real quick. By the way, I have no idea what she's asking me. Just so you know, this is not a stage thing. Rule number one is say it with control. And in a nutshell, it is anytime you're in a difficult conversation, rather than trying to control the other person, you start looking for what's going to control you. That's where you start to win. Remember, we're shifting the aim, shifting the perspective. Anytime that you start to try to control them,

That's when you get mad. That's when you get agitated. That's when your fight or flight kicks in. Maybe I'm the first to tell you this, but anytime you run across opinion that is different from yours, your fight or flight kicks in. Every time. You recognize it.

You ever gotten really tense in an argument? All of a sudden your fists might clench. Why? Because your body is ready to throw a punch. I don't know if you knew that. That's what your body is ready to do. It's ready to fight. Maybe you have tension in your jaw. Maybe you start to cry or tear up or your body starts to shake a little bit because how mad you are when your body is getting flooded with emotion. In any little disagreement, your body is saying two different things. First, your emotions react and they say,

I don't feel like I liked what they said. And they go, "Brain, what do you think?" And your brain goes, "Yeah, now that I think about it, I definitely don't like what they said." And instantly, we see threat. Doesn't matter our opinion, how big or small the issue, it is now a threat. And we either want to make it go away, that's why some people

Scream, they yell. Why? Because we do the same thing if there's a wild dog after you. We yell, we go away. We don't throw a punch, but we throw a word. We throw a word that hurts. We want the word to cut. We want the word to sting. It's pain. We want the threat to go away. Or we run from it. You ever had somebody who's in an argument with you on the phone and all of a sudden they go, I'm over it. And they click while you're still talking. They just click. That's their flight.

Their body says, I'm afraid of this threat. I need to go. Or somebody who they're in the room with you and all of a sudden they slam the door and walk away. Say, I'm out of here. They're leaving the room. Same thing. So back to your question of how do you control and prepare yourself? It is your body.

It's your breath. And while you're here, if it's cool with you, Jenny, let's walk through it. You want to walk through it real quick? So this is what I call a conversational breath. It's double inhalation. And what it does is mimic the feeling of a sigh. Now, this is not the kind of sigh where somebody says something and you go, it's not that. It's not that, I promise. So we're going to go, ready? It's going to be through your nose. Three seconds in, two more at the top, then all out through your nose. Now, that's very exaggerated, right?

In practice, you're going to get really good at it and doing it very quietly and nobody knows any different. This is when I want you to do it. And this is what I tell every single one of my clients. You're going to do it before you respond to something that is agitating you, that's cueing your fight or flight. And when you're listening to something that's cueing your fight or flight, anybody's been griping at you before and all of a sudden you're like, you're trying to regulate your system. So if you want to control yourself,

You have to control your breath. Why? Because that gives you time. It slows things down. So, we've all learned that strategy of how to slow things down. But can you actually use that in practice without people seeing that you're doing it? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I mean, I...

I do it all the time. Not in arguments, which I've done in arguments, but it's even when you're nervous about something, it helps to have a breath. And let me tell you why even inserting a little bit of silence is going to help you. And again, you know I love the power of the pause. I could talk about that all day because I'm a nerd about communication. Having a little bit of a second tells somebody a message. And it's a message that is going to differentiate you between a so-so communicator

and an excellent communicator. And it's just a two-second pause. If you were to ask me a question, a difficult question, rather than me having a rapid-fire response, or maybe you said something that hurt my feelings, I want a rapid-fire response. If I take...

a breath and I slow things down, I'm the one that's going to sound more in control. Yeah, you can absolutely do it in really any conversation that you have. So even if he were to say, how was your day, Jefferson? And I said, oh, it was good. It was good, Jenny. It was fine. Oh, it was a great day. Versus you said, how was your day, Jefferson? And I went, it was good. It was a good day, Jenny. Yeah, thanks for asking me. You hear how one is actually listened.

One says, "I was just responding." One says, "I was very intentional with my words." One says, "I was just responding." Same thing with people who, in any type of situation, if you're somebody in leadership, who are the people you want to follow? The people that always seem to control of themselves. So let's play it out. Which one sounds more in control to you? Somebody who says, "I already told you I'm not going to do that. I already told you." "I already told you I'm not going to do that."

Which one sounds like somebody you don't want to mess with? Which one sounds like somebody who's in control, who's balanced, somebody who's unshakable, unmovable? Who's somebody that you want to follow? One says, I'm grasping for control. The other says, nah, I never lost it. I'm right here. And that's the basis for the boundaries. That's the basis of if you don't say things with control, none of the rest matters.

Thanks for listening to Intelligence Squared. This episode was produced by Leila Ismail and it was edited by Mark Roberts. To add free episodes and full-length recordings, become a member at intelligencesquared.com forward slash membership. And to join us at future events, you can head to intelligencesquared.com forward slash attend.