David Brooks - Making People Feel Seen: How to Do it Right

it's crazy that I'm here at a Hospitality conference because I am not naturally warm and hospitable if you ever saw that movie uh

Fiddler on the Roof you know how warm and Huggy and emotional Jewish families can be always singing and dancing I come from the other kind of Jewish Family the phrase in my home was think

ysh British uh and so we were stiff upper lip unemotional and then when I was seven living down here in serson town I read a book called Paddington the bear and decided I should become a

writer and that was Central to my identity right away and I remember in high school I wanted to date this woman named Bernice uh she didn't want to date me and I remember she dated somebody else and I remember thinking what is she

thinking I write way better than that guy so that was core to my values so it's a little solitary uh every morning between 7:00 and noon

I'm writing all alone my Fitbit thinks I'm sleeping but apparently I'm doing what God wants me to do and so I was living up in my head and then when I was 18 the admissions officers at Columbia

Wesley and brown decided I should go to the University of Chicago uh and if you know about Chicago the famous phrase It's where fun goes to die

um my favorite phrase is um it's it's a Baptist school where atheist professors teach Jewish students St Thomas aquinus so it's super cerebral super intellectual place and I fit right in I

had a double major in history and celibacy while I was there at Chicago uh and and so again too much in my head and then 21 years ago I was hired by the New

York Times to be the conservative colonist at the Times uh a job I lik into being the chief Rabbi at Mecca uh not always a lot of company

there and then I got a job on TV and you would have thought that would have emotionally loosened me up a little because TV is emotional uh medium but I got a job at the most intellectual

version of TV which is the PBS NewsHour and so we have 14-minute sessions on the discussions of fiscal policy and we have a wonderful audience it's somewhat older

uh so if a 93y old lady comes up to me in the airport I know what she's going to say um I don't watch your program but my mother loves it uh

so and so none of this got me into being a full human being but you get older you have failures you have become a parent and you get a little more emotionally open and I really worked on it to be a

little more like people in the hospitality business and I was at a conference in anet a couple years ago and the speaker gave us all song sheet and on it were lyrics to A Love Song and

he told us okay find somebody in the crowd that you don't know gaze into their eyes and sing to them and if you had asked me to do that 20 years ago I would have spontaneously

combusted but I found some guy and I sang The Love Song into his eyes there were no sparks it was sad nothing happened between us but the sad

thing is as I was becoming a more human person American society was getting a little more dehumanized and I don't need to tell you all the statistics Rising depression

Rising suicide 54% of Americans say that no one knows them well the number of Americans who say they have no close personal friends is up by fourfold since 2000 the number of people not in a

romantic relationship is up by a third since 2000 the number of Americans who uh who rate themselves in the lowest happiness category is up by 50% since

2000 so we've just become sadder and meaner as a society and so why what's going on well there's a technology to be story to be told which is social media driving

us all crazy there's a sociology story we're less active in our communities there's an economic story which is widening income inequality means we're less like each other I tell the most

direct story which is we've gone several Generations in a row not teaching people the skills they need to be considerate to people in the concrete circumstances of life like think of Dr Becky up here

earlier being a parent that's a bunch of skills how do I have this conversation how do I ask for an offer forgiveness how do I sit with someone who's depressed how do I break up with

someone without breaking their heart how do I CR criticize with care these are just basic moral skills and the Apex skill is as will said the ability to see others and make them feel seen now

you're all probably pretty awesome at this but I can still say with great confidence you're not as good as you think you are uh there's a guy at the University of Texas who studies these

things and he finds that when people are strangers are first talking to each other they accurately understand what going on in the other person's mind about 22% of the time for some people

it's 55 some people it's 0% and they think it's 100% and those are the people missing all your social cues so in any group of people there are diminishers and they are

illuminators diminishers are not curious about you they don't ask questions sometimes I leave a party and I think you know that whole time nobody asked me a question I've come to think only about 30 or 40% of humanity are question

question askers they stereotype they make you feel small other people beam attention on you and make you feel lit up uh there was a woman named Jenny

Jerome who would later go on to become Winston Churchill's mom but when she was uh a young woman in Victorian England she was seated next to the Prime Minister of England at a dinner party William Gladstone and she left that

dinner thinking that he was the cleverest person in England couple weeks later she's at another dinner seated next to Benjamin Disraeli the Gladstone's great political rival and

she left that dinner thinking that she was the cleverest person in England so it's good to be Gladstone better be Israeli so how do you do it how do you what are the stages I'll just walk us through a few of the stages of getting

really being good at getting to know other people and making them feel seen the first is the Gaze when you first meet someone they're unconsciously asking themselves the questions you are unconsciously asking yourself is this

person going to be nice to me is this person going to treat me like a person or am I just an object to this person and the answers to those questions will be expressed in your eyes before any words come out of your mouth I was at a

diner in Waco Texas with a I was interviewing a a 93y old lady named laru dorsy who had been a teacher and was a tough

disciplinarian and uh I was intimidated by her she was a little formidable into the diner come walks a pastor friend of ours he knew both of us named Jimmy

derell and Jimmy walks up to our table grabs Mrs dorsy by The Arms by the shoulders and shakes her way harder than you should ever shake a 93y old and says to her Mrs dorsy Mrs dorsy

you're the best you're the best I love you I love you and that bright that Stern disciplinarian I'd been talking to turned into a bright ey shining nine-year-old girl the power of His gaze

the power of his attention changes what he she was so that's the first step the second St is accompaniment and accompaniment is like a Pianist accompanying a singer it's an other

centered way of being in the daily circumstances of life just paying attention more to the other than to yourself and sometimes you become aware of what they're going through rather

than focusing on your own life so I had a student a grad student named Jillian Sawyer and Jillian uh dad her dad when she was in college got pancreatic cancer

and they had the conversation he would probably not be around for a lot of her big events uh and he died after college and she was invited to a uh uh to be a

bridesmaid at her friend's wedding and she watched the Father of the Bride give a toast a beautiful toast to his daughter then it came time for the father daughter to dance and Jillian

thought that's just too much too soon so she went to the lady's room to go have a cry and when she came out of the lady's room all the people at her table at the reception and the adjacent table were standing there in the

hallway and I had Jillian as a grad student and she gave me permission to quote her description of what happened next what I will remember forever is that no one said a word each person

including including newer boyfriends who I knew less well gave me a reaffirming hug and headed back to their table no one lingered or awkwardly tried to validate my grief they were there for me

just for a moment and it was exactly what I needed somebody at the table said let's go to the hallway to be there for Jillian that's accompaniment the third phase and most

important it's conversation just being a really good conversationalist so for the book I ask conversation experts to tell me how do you get really good at

conversation uh and uh they gave me some tips one is be a loud listener uh I have a buddy you talk when you're talking to him it's like talking

to a Pentecostal Church he's like amen yes yes preach that preach preach that love talking to that guy

Don't Fear the pause if I've and we're having an important conversation I begin a comment at my shoulder and I talk to my fingertips at what point have you stopped listening so you can think of

what to say in response probably here so let me talk to my fingertips pause and then respond don't be a Topper if you say to me oh I had a horrible flight we

were on the tarmac for two hours I'm likely to say oh I know what you were think going through I was on a horrible flight and we were on the tarmac for six hours and it seems like I'm trying to relate to you but what I'm really saying

is let's pay less attention to your inferior set of experiences and more attention to my Superior set so don't be a Topper finally keep the gem statement

in the center if you're disagreeing with somebody there's probably something deep down you both agree upon if my brother and I are fighting over our Dad's health care we both want what's best for our dad and if you keep the gem statement in

the center among a disagreement you preserve the relationship finally the quality of your conversations depends on the quality of your questions now you were all everybody in

this room was once a phenomenal question asker I know that CU you were all once four years old kids are great at question asking I have a friend named naobi way who

teaches here in DC in New York uh she teaches eighth grade boys how to how to be interviewers how to ask questions and the first time she did this she went in front of the class and said okay ask me

anything I'll answer honestly first boy said are you married she said no second boy said are you divorced she saides the third boy said do you still love him she

was like whoa whoa and she started crying and said yes and the next boy said does he know and the next kid said dear kids no like they just kept coming at her and at her with

questions and so when I ask questions now I make them storytelling questions as a political journalist I don't ask people what do you believe I ask people how did you come to believe that it's

just a better way to uh get them to tell me a story there's a a passage in a book called you're not listening by Kate Murphy where she talks about a focus

group leader who uh was asking uh she was hired to figure out why people go to the grocery store late at night and instead of just asking why do people go to the grocery store late at night she

asked a story question tell me about the last time you went to the grocery store late at night and one woman in the focus group who hadn't said anything said well I'd smoked the joint and I needed a

Minaj at to with me Ben and Jerry and that was that's a story my favorite questions I start with asking people what they're proud of or where they're from but that my favorite questions once you get to know somebody

are 30,000 feet questions you get them thinking about their own life like if this five years is a chapter in life chapter in your life what's the chapter about if we met a year from now what would we be

celebrating what would you do if you weren't afraid I had a buddy who uh was being interviewed for a job after the interview he turned around and asked the interview what would you do if you weren't afraid and she started crying

because she wouldn't be doing HR at that company but she's too afraid to leave um there's a guy named Peter block who has really deep questions but you really have to know people while they

ask these what is the no or refusal you keep postponing what commitments have you made that you no longer believe in what is the gift you currently hold in Exile

what talent do you have that you're not using these are all questions that are ways to get to know other people now when I'm around I ask people tell me about a

time you felt seen and some of them are ordinary and a lot have to do with teachers people will say like my my friend said his second grade daughter was struggling and the teacher said to her one day you know you're really good

at thinking before you speak and that turned the girl's whole year around because what she thought was her weakness social awkwardness was now perceived as a strength when he told me that story I remember thinking my 11th

grade teacher Mrs dnap I was said something smartass in class which is my mode um now become a career um and she said to me David you're

trying to get by on gbus stop it and once I was humiliated in front of the whole class on the other hand I thought wow she really knows me I'm so honored

sometimes the stories are a little more um impressive I read I was reading a biography of Franklin Roosevelt and when he was in the early days the New Deal he had a 28-year-old Congressman come into

his office and the congressman was named Lyndon Johnson and after the meeting FDR turned to his Aid Harold IIs and said you know Harold that's the kind of uninhibited

young pro I might have been as a young man if I hadn't gone to Harvard and then he said in the next couple of generations the balance of power in this country is going to shift to the South

and West and that kid Lynden Johnson could well be the first Southwestern president that's pretty accurate perception on the part of

FDR I have a rabbi uh a guy I read named Rabbi Elliot koua he tells a woman who in his in his congregation who had a brain injury and sometimes she would

just fall to the ground and people rushed to lift her up and she told Kula I think people rush to help me because they are so uncomfortable with seeing an adult lying

on the floor but what I really need is for someone to get down on the ground with me and that to me is a one sentence description of empathy not doing what makes you comfortable but getting down

on the floor with someone some of the times when I come across people who have been seen are just very moving uh I read a book called Lost and Found by a New Yorker writer named

Katherine Schultz beautiful book it's about her dad a guy named Isaac who sounds like a wonderful guy he had opinions on everything uh he was an entertaining

Storyteller uh just sounds like the light of a room at the very end of his life he went mute he stopped talking and they couldn't figure it out because talking was what he did and at the very end of his

life they the family gathered around and decided to say the things they didn't want to leave unsaid uh and Schulz describes the

scene my father mute but seemingly alert looked from one face to the next as we spoke his brown eyes shining with tears I had always hated to see him cry and

seldom did but for once I was grateful it gave me hope that for what may have been the last time in his life and perhaps the most important he

understood if nothing else I knew that everywhere he looked that evening he found himself where he had always been with his family the center of the circle the source and subject of our Abiding

Love so that was a guy who died well SE and if it's good to feel seen it's also good to feel be the Seer I was at my uh home in DC and I was

sitting at the dining room table reading a boring book which is what I do for a living and my wife walks in and you can see our front door from the dining room

table and she pauses at the threshold and she leaves the door open the Summer sun is coming in behind her and she doesn't even notice that I'm

there because that's the kind of Charisma I have and her eyes rest upon an orchid we keep on the table by the door and her she's just thinking about something and

I look up at her and I say to myself I really know her I just know her through and through and if you had asked me what it was I was knowing about her at that instant that moment of deep

connection it was it wasn't like her personality type it wasn't the words I would use to describe her to a person it was sort of the whole flow of her being

the lifts and harmonies of her music just the incandescence of her personality the occasional flashes of fierceness the insecurities it was a whole way of her her music and it was

all as if I wasn't looking at her I was looking out from her and when you really know somebody well you know a little how they see the world and if you had asked me me to

describe the how I was looking at her I wasn't observing her I wasn't um inspecting her God knows the only word in the English language I could think of

to describe that way of looking at her was the word beholding I was just beholding her and it was a moment that comes when you really or get inside someone and just

have look at them with such appreciation and love and after it happened I told some friends of mine uh about the story and they said yeah that's what we do with our grandkids we just

behold and it's the nicest way of seeing so we live in a brutal age the famous dates of our Century are bad

dates September 11th January 6th October 7th and there is a tendency to want to cover up and be

distrustful and American is a much less trusting Society two generations ago 60% of Americans say they could trust your their neighbors now it's down to

30% and and 19% of millennial in gen Z so there's a tendency to want to protect yourself but I found it's not naive to

lead with curiosity it's not naive to lead with vulnerability that you will be betrayed but that's it's better to trust people and be betrayed occasionally than

to distrust people and so I I I just think it I go out and lead with with more vulnerability than I would have been capable of years ago uh and I learned a

lesson about this last November I was in a hotel bar and if you had seen me there you would have thought sad Guy drinking alone but I call it

reporting U and I'm scrolling through all these horrible images and suddenly there's a video of James Baldwin that comes up an

interview with him and he says there must not there may not be as much Humanity in the world as one would like to see but there is some there is more than one would think walk down the

street of any City any afternoon and look around you what you've got to remember is what you're looking at is also you you could be that person you could be that wonderful person you could

be that monster and you've got to decide for yourself what you want to be now American society treated James Baldwin terribly and he had every reason to be

bit and closed off and yet that concept that you could be that person everybody you see you could be that person the phrase that leapt into my mind is defiant humanism and it seems to me in times

like these and especially an election season like that that's what we're called upon to do thank you very [Applause] much for