Delve Into If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look On My Face?: My Adventures In The Art And Science Of Relating And Communicating Devised By Alan Alda Compiled As Bound Copy
Alda is a joy to listen to and he's a good writer, This book, despite its fun title, is a serious tomefocused on getting across how important it is to communicate clearly and effectively, Examples are cited, and exercises and games are detailed to help you do exactly that,
Focusing on the other person in a conversation, not just waiting for your turn to speak, and noting their facial expressions and body language are key, According to Alda, if you are not willing to be changed by a person/conversation then you are NOT really open and listening,
It turns out that empathy is really important in effective communication, One of the exercises in this book mentions watching a person's face during a conversation and specifically noting and NAMING, silently, the emotions you see on their face, This will sometimes tell you what they are going to say or do next, It tells you if they're understanding what you're saying, or if instead they are bored or confused, At times and with practice, it will sometimes seem to people that you can read minds, but what you're really doing is truly LISTENING,
Because Alan Alda has such a warm, comfortable style I learned a lot from what in less capable hands could have been a very boring book, It also might be due to the fact that Alda is an extremely effective communicator, I have already started to put some of these games and exercises into practice and I believe they have already helped me in certain areas of my life, If you are open, read: WILLING TO BE CHANGED, then I highly recommend this book!
I borrowed this audiobook from my awesome public library, Libraries RULE! From iconic actor and bestselling author Alan Alda, an indispensable guide to communicating betterbased on his experience with acting, improv, science, and storytelling
The acclaimed actor shares fascinating and powerful lessons from the art and science of communication, and teaches readers to improve the way they relate to others using improv games, storytelling, and their own innate ability to read whats probably going on in the minds of others.
With his trademark humor and frankness, Alan Alda explains what makes the outofthebox techniques he developed after his years as the host of Scientific American Frontiers so effective.
This book reveals what it means to be a true communicator, and how we can communicate better, in every aspect of our liveswith our friends, lovers, and families, with our doctors, in business settings, and beyond.
Alan Alda will be presenting in the Twin Cities next week as part of the Pen Pals series, sponsored by the Friends of the Hennepin County Libraries, Learning of his appearance, doing some research about him, and reading this book has been a WHO KNEW experience from beginning to end, First off, who knew Alda was a writer I knew him as an actor, director, etc, but not as a writer, So I was surprised to find several books by and about Alda when I did a search at the public library, I decided to begin with his most recent publication, "If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face: My Adventures in the Art and Science of Relating and Communication.
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Who knew that Alda hosted a television show called, "Scientific American Frontiers" fromWho knew of his intense fascination with science Who knew that he founded the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science Who knew Who knew
Here Alda explores how we can effectively communicate our ideas, zeroing in on scientists in particular.
Being married to a scientist, and having spent a lot of time around scientists, I found the topic extremely interesting, However, there is much here that is applicable to all of us, I found his discussions of empathy and writing and literature and nonverbal communication particularly interesting, as these are all things I have taught, Alda's premises all make total sense, nothing totally earth shattering here really, The central question is whether or not he himself accomplishes the very thing he asks of scientists in the writing of this work of nonfiction, Does he effectively communicate his ideas And if so, how The answer is that, yes, he generally does communicate his ideas effectively by not using jargon loved the SCIgen discussion on pages!, by tuning into his improvisational training, by exhibiting empathy, by remembering his reader, etc.
I am not a nonfiction reader, but I actually really enjoyed this book and look forward to hearing Alda talk more about it next week!
Who knew, Alan Alda Who knewStars for If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look On My Face audiobook By Alan Alda read by the author.
This was a happy surprise, I really wasnt sure what to expect from this book, Alan Alda has a lot of interesting insight into communication, This is a topic that he has really investigated, But what I think I liked best was all the ways the author mentions how he has communicated poorly in the past, Disappointing. I can't say I didn't get anything out of it, or that it's outright BS, but I expected better based on Alda's years of experience in training people on this topic.
Nerd addendum:
The absence of references is lazy for a serious nonfiction book about science, It made it harder than necessary to verify some of the claims made, e, g. that empathy training of doctors improves patient outcomes, Alda is emphatic about this assertion but the science is pretty weak, The metaanalysis not cited on pageinvolvesstudies featuring sample sizes ofandand "not reported, " !!!!!!!!!!!!! The studies with the most solid objective outcomes blood pressure showed no difference between treatment and control groups, And for people who care about facts and such, here's the link to the reference: sitelink plos. org/plosone/arti . See comment stream below for more details,
Alda's claim about the impact of teaching doctors "empathy" is a central selling point for his technique of teaching scientists and doctors how to communicate, The fact that this assertion is based on such weak evidence damages the premise of the entire book,
Alda doesn't claim to be a scientist or else he would get, and I accept that he is a master communicator, But this kind of mess just illustrates how you have to understand the basics of the scientific process before you can communicate it, Science is not a collection of geewhiz factoids, Science is a method for understanding the universe,
"Sciencewriting" is not the same thing as writing science, Alan Alda is something of an institution at this point, He has parlayed his fame as an actor on a longrunning wellwritten TV serial, MASH, into doing whatever takes his fancy, Good for him. He was never extensively schooled in science but he loved it, pursued it, made a new kind of career out of having scientists explain their secrets to him on film.
In a way it is out of this experience that this opportunity to explain communication came to him: how do we know the other side in a conversation actually understands what we are saying One can imagine the numerous ways we would want to verify the other side 'got the message' in the way we meant them to.
Alda uses the example of a doctor explaining a terminal diagnosis to a patient, getting no reaction, and then querying the patient: Why didn't you ask more questions The patient hadn't understood what the doctor was saying.
. . hadn't known he had just said 'get your affairs in order, '
Alda explains that the skill to notice how much the other in a conversation is comprehending is a learned skill, We can improve. He suggests that one way to do this is through improvisation exercises that require one to mirror exactly reproduce in real time the movements of another, One must watch, empathize, involve oneself deeply in the other's experience in order to do this, Mimicking doesn't mean one feels all the things the other does, but one gets closer to their experience,
That seems to be about it, There are lots of stories, etc, but he is more interested in his results than I am, Reminds us that advancement in these fields is painfully slow, I'm glad he is doing what interests him, I listened to the audio, produced by Penguin Random House and read by the author, He was able to put his emphases in where he wanted them, and was able to convey his interest in the subject to us, but I grew weary before the end, at the end of one lab experiment he'd designed with neuroscientists and financed, thinking.
. . oh, yes, I remember those science experiments that never seemed to go anywhere, But, as he says, even the negative of a result tells us something,
. . The greatest science communication failure of recent history occurred during breaking news coverage of the Higgs boson particle discovery, At least, thats my opinion, This particle, claimed to be the active ingredient in objects having mass, is a huge deal, Yet, look at this gibberish news outlets threw at me as the leading quotation for the achievement,
“We have observed a new boson with a mass of,plus or minus.GeV at.standard deviations. ”
No offense to Dr, Joe Incandela, who made the above technical statement to a room full of scientists, Following his words, the gathering bubbled over with applause, even tears in at least one case, But the jargon was lost on me, That day I refused to be impressed as a matter of principle, Science had failed to explain itself,
Such disconnects between scientists and the public comprise the impetus for Alan Aldas latest book: If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face: My Adventures in the Art and Science of Relating and Communicating.
Known to many for his acting career, Alda has dedicated much of his time to promoting better science communication, Far from being a mere oncamera spokesman, Alda works as a Visiting Professor at the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science,
Using personal examples, as well as research, Alda makes the case for empathy as essential to good communication, He couples this with insights regarding the Theory of Mind, Think of empathy as the emotional connection, and Theory of Mind as the rational component, Empathy, according to Alda, is a skill which can be developed and refined,
Not surprisingly, Alda advocates cultivating empathy through theatrical improv a serious performance method, not merely a gamedriven attempt to get laughs, Anyone who has taken an acting class with improv as a component, myself included, will find this to be selfevident, The same practiced skills which help actors connect onstage can help scientists connect with the public, As Alda relates, this extends to medical doctors, business leaders, hopeful lovers, and parents mentoring children,
If I Understood You stays on task via short chapters and focused, conversational prose, It wraps up in a tidypages, There is also an audio version, read by Alda, which Ill safely assume is highly enjoyable, The result is a book calculated to be accessible, informative and thoughtprovoking,
Odd then that this book sometimes struggled to hold my interest, If I Understood You is full of nuggets: nuggets of wisdom, hindsight, and profound experience, Any chapter by itself can be a delight, and many were for me, Yet, perhaps because of the testimonial nature, perhaps because of the copious repetition of its premise, the book sometimes felt like an afterdinner conversation growing tiresome, In no way am I panning it, However, I do suggest readers avoid devouring the book quickly which I did so I could post my review asap,
Given its levelheaded blend of entertainment with educational discourse, If I Understood You disqualifies itself from being Aldas most fun book yet, It may however prove his most important, given the toxic level of animosity in current public discussion, Therefore, I highly recommend reading it, Come for the theory, but stay for the moments of sublime understanding, I would recommend this book for anyone who is interested in brain science or improving their empathy and communication skills, As someone who sometimes struggles with social cues I really appreciated the practical chapter on things you can try on your own, without an improv group, to improve skills at reading people's faces and therefore communication.
As a scientist and author concerned about how we communicate with the general public, I was eager to read this book by revered actor Alan Alda, The book reiterates and expands on a lecture I saw him give a few days ago, Between the two I learned a lot about improving communication, Alda mixes anecdotes and stories from his own experience, both as an actor MASH, West Wing, movies, etc, and his lifelong interest in science that led to him hosting Scientific American Frontiers foryears, Recently he helped establish the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University, where many of the techniques discussed in the book were developed and are currently used to teach communication skills to scientists.
The first of two parts includes eleven chapters and primarily focuses on laying the groundwork for communication, He emphasizes the importance of empathy and "theory of mind, " The ten chapters in the second part delve more deeply into the scientific studies conducted to investigate the skill sets being taught,
Much of the training incorporates the concept of improvisation, or Improv, This is a technique often used by actors and more famously by comedians to entertain without a script, In this case, the technique is used to help scientists and others to learn how to "read" the person they are trying to communicate with, Games such as "the mirror exercise" help participants learn empathy, a mutual understanding of the person you're speaking to,
There is much more to the book than one might expect from an actor, Alda has taken his goal of helping scientists communicate seriously, proposing and participating in studies to determine the best methods for teaching others, He provides a strong scientific basis from the studies he describes and has worked with or interviewed professors and practitioners of these methods,
Based on my own experience it's part of the reason I left a scientific consulting career to pursue writing and expanding public knowledge of science and history, the book is both scientifically robust and entertaining to read.
While the focus is on helping scientists to better communicate, the lessons imparted will also be useful for all of us who wish to be better understood by and to better understand our fellow members of the public.
Alan Alda should be commended for his contributions in this much needed area, .