An Expert's Guide To Mastering Difficult Conversations - Tim Harkness - #198

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Hi friends, welcome back. My guest today is Tim Harkness, and we are speaking about a topic which seems to come up a lot at the moment, how to have good conversations. It's indicative of the time, right, that everyone is shouting and no one is listening. So hopefully today, Tim, with his beautiful South African accent, is going to give you some tips on how you can be a better conversationalist. Our ability to communicate is crucial for happiness and social cohesion. And yet, it seems the art of having a productive conversation has been very, very lost, especially in 2020 So today, expect to learn Tim's favorite rules for effective talking, the conversation archetypes, how to diagnose your own communication strategy, whether Donald Trump is truly a master communicator, and much more. I also love people with South African accents, man. Like, it's so good. Tim, Tim Harkness. I can't do South African very good, but he's great. He's great. I changed my Siri to South African, to a South African lady, because that's how much I love the accent. So speaking to Tim for an hour was wonderful. In other news, this Thursday is episode 200 Shit the bed. How the hell? 200 episodes has come around. This quickly blows my mind. But yeah, episode 200, we had tons and tons, literally hundreds of messages with questions that we went through, myself, Johnny and Youssef. Also, we might be doing an in-person podcast soon. Well, I don't know. I don't know if recording us sat in a room together is actually like a legal offence. So if anyone knows, if I'm allowed to do it, let me know. Or we might just accidentally break the law and see if we can get it done. But yeah, this Thursday, episode 200, really, really fun, me, Jonny and Yusef, just riffing on a bunch of questions people asked us about life and erectile dysfunction and B days and all of the other random stuff that we talk about. But for now, we're going to listen to Tim's wonderful, Tim, Tim Harkness. Going to listen to his beautiful South African accent.
An expert's guide to mastering difficult conversations, has there ever been a more appropriate time to work out how to have difficult conversations than right now?

**Tim Harkness** (2:34)
You know, I wrote the book, and just, there's one line in the book that refers to the pandemic. And it's the last revision that was made to the manuscript. And I thought to myself, as the lockdown started, is the book relevant still? because it just seemed that we had this all-encompassing issue that we all needed to pay attention to. And then, of course, you know, the complexity of the lockdown emerged, and then the Black Lives Matter protest began as well. And suddenly I thought to myself, actually, yes, you know, I think this notion and, you know, not even to make a claim for my book, but just to make a claim for talking, just to make a claim for communication. I think this is something that we need globally. And yeah, absolutely, it's been reinforced in the last couple of months.

**Chris Williamson** (3:28)
You had a little bit of divination, clairvoyant foresight perhaps there about just how much it was needed.

**Tim Harkness** (3:35)
Wow, you know, I mean, obviously, we've been dealing with Brexit for years, you know, and I think people have been, there's this growing economic inequality that I think has been a concern for people. And that's just at the political level, you know, and then at the personal level or the professional level. I mean, one of the things that the lockdown has thrown up has been what, I read this book and it calls it domestic bargaining. And it's basically who does the vacuuming. But, you know, there's this whole kind of field of study around it.

**Chris Williamson** (4:14)
Oh, that's a body of work now.

**Tim Harkness** (4:15)
Oh, yes, yes, absolutely. And, you know, the thing is, I mean, just think how much it affects all of us. Well, I don't know if it affects you, but it certainly affects me.

**Chris Williamson** (4:24)
Me and my housemate have got every other Thursday, we get the marigold yellow gloves on, and we throw the tunes on, and he does the bathroom and the living room, and I do the kitchen and downstairs, and then it's done, and that's it once every two weeks.

**Tim Harkness** (4:40)
Okay, so you go for straighter quality, that's your, it's like absolutely-

**Chris Williamson** (4:44)
Quality of outcome and the quality of opportunity, yeah, equal access to the Hoover, equal access to the-

**Tim Harkness** (4:50)