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My first rule of conversation is this: I never learn a thing while I’m talking. I realize every morning that nothing I say today will teach me anything, so if I’m going to learn a lot today, I’ll have to do it by listening.
As obvious as this sounds, you run across proof every day that people simply do not listen. Tell your family or friends your plane will arrive at eight and before the conversation ends they’ll ask, "What time did you say your plane is coming in?" And try to estimate the number of times you have heard someone say, "I forgot what you told me."
If you don’t listen any better than that to someone, you cannot expect them to listen any better to you. I try to remember the signs you see at railroad crossings in small towns and rural areas: "Stop—Look—Listen." Show the people you talk to that you’re interested in what they’re saying. They will show you the same.
To be a good talker, you must be a good listener. This is more than just a matter of showing an interest in your conversation partner. Careful listening makes you better able to respond—to be a good talker when it’s your turn. Good follow-up questions are the mark of a good conversationalist.
When I watch Barbara Walters’s interviews I’m often disappointed, because I think she asks too many "so what" questions, like "If you could come back, what would you like to be?" In my opinion Barbara would be much better if she asked less frivolous questions and better follow-ups, logical extensions of the answer to her previous question. That comes from listening.
I was pleased by something Ted Koppel said to Time magazine a few years ago. "Larry listens to his guests," he said. "He pays attention to what they say. Too few interviewers do that." Even though I’m known as a "talking head," I think my success comes first and foremost from listening.
When I interview guests on the air, I make notes ahead of time about the kinds of questions I will ask them. But often I’ll hear something in one of their responses that leads me into an unexpected question—and a surprising answer.
Example: When Vice President Dan Quayle was my guest during the 1992 presidential campaign, we talked about the laws governing abortion. He said it made no sense at all for his daughter’s school to require his or his wife’s permission for their daughter to miss a day of school, but not to get an abortion. As soon as he said that, I was curious about Quayle’s personal angle on this political topic. So I asked what his attitude would be if his daughter said she was going to have an abortion. He said he would support her in whatever decision she made.
Quayle’s reply made news. Abortion was a white-hot issue in that campaign, and here was President Bush’s very conservative running mate, the national Republican spokesman for his conservative wing’s unalterable opposition to abortion, suddenly saying he would support his daughter if she decided to have one.
Regardless of your views on that issue, the point here is that I got the response from Quayle because I wasn’t just going through a list of questions. I was listening to what he was saying. That was what led me to the newsworthy answer.
The same thing happened when Ross Perot came on my show on February 20, 1992, and denied several times that he was interested in running for president. I kept hearing that his denials were less than complete, and when I put the question differently near the end of the show—bang! Perot said he’d run if his supporters succeeded in registering him on the ballot in all fifty states.
All of that happened not because of what I said, but because of what I heard. I was listening.
The late Jim Bishop, the popular writer, columnist, and author, was another New Yorker who spent a lot of time in Miami when I was there. He told me once that one of his pet peeves was people who ask you how you are but then don’t listen to your answer. One man in particular was a repeat offender on this subject, so Jim decided to test just how poor a listener this fellow was.
The man called Jim one morning and began the conversation the way he always did: "Jim, how are ya?"
Jim says, "I have lung cancer."
"Wonderful. Say, Jim ..."
Bishop had proved his point.
Dale Carnegie put it effectively in his book How to Win Friends and Influence People, which has now sold fifteen million copies: "To be interesting, be interested."
He added, "Ask questions that other persons will enjoy answering. Encourage them to talk about themselves and their accomplishments. Remember that the people you are talking to are a hundred times more interested in themselves and their wants and problems than they are in you and your problems. A person’s toothache means more to that person than a famine in China which kills a million people. A boil on one’s neck interests one more than forty earthquakes in Africa. Think of that the next time you start a conversation."