If you want to be successful personally and professionally, you have to put down your phone and learn to have face-to-face conversations.
The popularity of cell phones has made an entire generation of young people afraid of face-to-face conversation.
If you don't stop texting, and instead learn to embrace telephone calls and face-to-face conversations, you will never develop the emotional intelligence, maturity, and empathy that are necessary to be a happy, successful person.
One of the main reasons people are afraid of face-to-face conversation and prefer texting is that they say when they're texting, they can edit what they say and correct things.
I'm going to give you five things you can say that allow you to edit your real-time remarks in a face-to-face conversation or phone call.
Reclaiming Conversation
I've just been reading the excellent book, Reclaiming Conversation, by the author Sherry Turkle, who talks about how the art of conversation and the ability to conduct either telephone calls or face-to-face conversations is being lost because of the ubiquity of digital devices, especially cell phones. People, and specifically young people, prefer to text or chat or use some sort of remote digital communication rather than have face-to-face conversation or phone calls.
We might think, "Well, this is just what modern life is like." But in Sherry Turkle's book, she makes a long and convincing argument that the reliance on these digital devices and the decline of solitude and face-to-face conversation is actually robbing young people of the ability to develop empathy and a variety of other critical skills for later success and happiness in life.
Turkle interviewed a lot of young people for this book, and many of them, not surprisingly, expressed a very clear preference for texting rather than face-to-face conversation or telephone calls, both of which these young people said they avoided as much as possible, and sometimes they avoided as a rule.
She talks about one college student who had a rule that they would never go to office hours with a professor because it felt like an uncontrollable situation where something might go wrong. It was just too high stakes, and they couldn't afford for anything to go wrong.
There's another student who had a friend whose family member die suddenly, and they wanted to offer condolences and did so over text. The question was, "Why didn't you go see them or call them up on the phone?" It was the same fear of not knowing exactly how to handle a face-to-face conversation or a phone call. Sometimes people use the excuse that the friend doesn’t want to be bothered by a phone call or a face-to-face conversation, as if that kind of intimate connection would be a bother to someone who is mourning the sudden death of a family member.
Growing Up in the Digital Era
According to these interviews, the number one reason for avoiding face-to-face conversations or telephone calls was that on texting, you could edit what you said and that you didn't have to be responsible for sort of saying something spontaneously that might not come out perfectly. In texting, you could write what you wanted to write and then carefully edit it so it would be just exactly what you want it to say. Texting also meant you could add emojis and other context so that it would have exactly the meaning you want.
In contrast, face-to-face conversation with its spontaneity seemed to be extremely threatening. It felt dangerous and out of control for these young people that Sherry Turkle interviewed because they couldn't edit or thought that they couldn't edit their comments in a spontaneous, flowing face-to-face interaction. That's why they had this clear preference for texting. The whole idea was that face-to-face conversation was much more threatening and frightening and demanding. Also, because they grew up digital, they also had a lot less experience with face-to-face conversation.
I was 42 years old before I got my first iPhone. I grew up in an era without a smartphone, without texting, so I had to learn the art of face-to-face conversation. I'm here to tell you, of course it's challenging, like many things are being a human being, but it's not that difficult and it's enormously rewarding. I want to address this main fear, this idea that you can't edit in face-to-face conversation, and that's why texting is safer. So I'm going to give you five phrases that you can use to edit yourself in face-to-face conversation, because in fact, a real face-to-face conversation is infinitely revisable.
5 Key Phrases to Overcome Fear of Conversation
In every moment of a real face-to-face conversation, you are creating the meaning, you're recreating the relationship, and all those meanings are subject to negotiation in the ongoing flow of the interaction. This is the beauty of a spontaneous interaction. It's being created in the moment. It's not as if everything we say we're held responsible for until the end of time. Because the other person in the conversation realizes that what's being said is spontaneous, they are very forgiving if you say something that's slightly the wrong thing.
There are actually many repair devices in face-to-face conversation that allow you to edit your own remarks. Here are five of these phrases that you can use when you say something that you didn't intend exactly, and you want to revise or edit your remarks in a face-to-face conversation.
1. "Sorry, that's not what I meant to say." When we're talking spontaneously, we just say what comes to mind, and sometimes it's just not exactly what we intended. So all you have to say is, "Sorry, that's not what I meant to say," and then you revise your remarks. The other person won't even blink an eye. Especially if you apologize, they realize, "That was unintentional." Whatever might've come out that was awkward or even potentially offensive, you say, "Sorry, that's not what I meant to say."
2. “Sorry, can I try that again?” Again, it's the same idea. You're speaking spontaneously. Who knows what might come out, and it might come out in a very unpolished, unintentional, and even potentially embarrassing or offensive way. So you just say, "Sorry, can I try that again?" and the person will allow you to rephrase what you said and not hold you responsible for what you said spontaneously which wasn't perfectly crafted. There is no expectation in a face-to-face conversation that every remark will be perfectly crafted.
3. “Sorry, that didn't come out right.” It's the same thing. Just say, "Sorry, that didn't come out right. Let me rephrase that," and you go ahead and say what you really wanted to say, rather than what came out garbled or awkward in the flow of spontaneous talk.
4. "Sorry, I'm having a hard time saying what I mean." This is a little more reflective and different. This just lets another person know that synthesizing our thoughts and articulating them clearly how we intend them to come across isn't easy. That's why writing is so hard. That's why composition is so hard. It's because our thoughts are a jumble, our feelings are a jumble, and when we're talking in the spontaneous flow of a face-to-face conversation, we don't always get it right. We often get it wrong. We don't even know exactly what we feel from moment to moment, or even exactly what we're thinking. To a large extent, we only know what we're thinking because we're talking about it. It's in the act of expression that we learn what we're thinking.
It's actually an illusion to believe that we have a fully formed thought in the language of thought, and that speaking is about converting that to the language of language. Instead, we don't know exactly what we're thinking until we say it. Many writers will tell you that they don't know what they're thinking until they write it. Writing is like thinking on the page and speaking in a spontaneous face-to-face conversation is like thinking in real time.
If the other person is a decent, ordinary human being, they will understand this from their own experience, and you just say, "I'm having a hard time saying what I mean." It might take several attempts before you figure out what you mean and are successful in articulating it. So number four, "Sorry, I'm having a hard time saying what I mean."
5. "That sounded terrible." Sometimes stuff comes out of our mouth that we just can't believe came out of our mouth. It's just maybe really too blunt or obviously offensive, or maybe we just slipped and said something we didn't intend to. Maybe we say something and then we realize when we hear it, it's just terrible. Sometimes the stuff we think is relevant, useful, tactful or polite to say, when we actually hear it come out of our mouths we realize, "No, that doesn't sound good at all."
Often when I train doctors and nurses how to talk to patients and families who have been harmed by healthcare, we have people huddle up and practice what they're going to say. And in those practice sessions, they say terrible things. They're not terrible people, it's just that in these difficult conversations, it's not clear what the right thing is to say. On your first attempt, it sometimes is really wrong and you don't realize how wrong it is until you actually try to make the words come out of your mouth. When you say something awkward or potentially offensive, just follow with, "That sounded terrible." Then you can revise your remarks.
Summary
I feel so strongly about this issue of cell phones. I'm just as guilty as everyone else. I'm not different than you or better than you. I may be worse than you. I’m just as guilty of using my cell phone too much, and of taking advantage of the distancing that becomes possible when you text instead of call or instead of having a face-to-face conference. But I am old enough to have had learned face-to-face conversation skills before these digital devices came along and to have appreciated the benefits that those brought to me, both personally and professionally.
All of the most meaningful experiences in my life have occurred face-to-face with the people that I cared about, and not via text. It's not that nothing important has ever happened over text, but real human connection, I think, still happens in face-to-face interaction.
This might change over time. I'm not sure. We'll just have to see how this digital landscape evolves. But when I think about my children or other young people or my students, I'm very concerned that this over-reliance on digital technology and especially texting over phone calls or face-to-face conversation robs them of the very important ability to learn, to develop empathy and other skills which develop in the context of face-to-face conversations.
If your primary fear is that in face-to-face conversation you can't edit your remarks, I hope these five phrases reassure you that you can in fact edit your remarks during a face-to-face conversation. It's not as chaotic and out of control as you might think it is. It's actually very safe when you have a normal, ordinary partner. If you have a really toxic person, maybe you should get away from that toxic person. But normal, ordinary conversational partners who are experienced in conversation know that you sometimes say the wrong thing and it's totally normal to be able to revise your remarks in the spontaneous flow of talk.