520: Dan Lyons - The Power of Shutting Up, Earning Attention, & Becoming a Better Listener
The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk
Ryan Hawk
4.9 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 2 April 2023
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of "Mindful Monday." Join 10's of thousands of your fellow learning leaders and receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right...
Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com
Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12 https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12
Dan Lyons is the New York Times bestselling author of "Disrupted," "Lab Rats," and "STFU: The Power of Keeping Your Mouth Shut in an Endlessly Noisy World." Dan was a writer for HBO's hit comedy, "Silicon Valley," and before that was a journalist at Newsweek, Forbes, and Fortune.
- The best sales reps spend 54 percent of the call listening and 46 percent talking. The worst reps talked 72 percent of the time. They made calls feel like conversations.
- A company called Gong uses machine learning software that analyzes sales calls to find out what works and what doesn't. Its software vacuums up millions of hours of audio data and then analyzes it to figure out how the best sales reps operate. Gong's customers use this information to train new sales reps and help underperformers improve. In 2017 Gong analyzed more than five hundred thousand calls and found that sales calls with the best close rates were ones in which reps knew how to be quiet and ask questions instead of making a sales pitch. To be precise, the most successful reps asked eleven to fourteen questions. Fewer than that, and you're not digging deep enough. More than that, the call starts to feel like an interrogation.
- Eavesdropping on happiness: The research showed that people who spent more time having substantive conversations were happier than those who spent more time having small talk, and weather conversations.
- Always Say Less Than Necessary – "When you are trying to impress people with words, the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in control. Even if you are saying something banal, it will seem original if you make it vague, open-ended, and sphinxlike. Powerful people impress and intimidate by saying less. The more you say, the more likely you are to say something foolish." -- Robert Greene
- Researcher, Mehl joined a team that made a third big discovery: that people who suffer from anxiety and depression use the first-person singular pronouns I, me, and my more than other people.
- Go OUTSIDE – Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson, who hypothesized that our affinity for the outdoors and love of living things have been hardwired into our DNA by evolution and exist as innate parts of our psychological and physiological makeup. Wilson calls this "biophilia," a name derived from the ancient Greek words for "life" and "love." It's the reason people watch birds, melt at the sight of baby bunnies, travel to Yellowstone National Park to marvel at the bison, and rush to the window when a deer wanders into their yard. It's why walking through Muir Woods among giant thousand-year-old redwood trees takes your breath away.
- The Talkaholic Scale Test – Prior to writing the book, Dan scored a 50 (the highest possible score)… Meaning he is a talkaholic. AFTER writing the book, he scored a 40, and Dan's wife scored him at 38.
- Life/Career Advice: Earn attention by doing great work, not by being loud and outlandish. It's more lasting and will help you build better relationships and a great career.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Quick announcement before we get to this episode, we are hosting our 2023 growth summit, May 3rd through May 5th in Columbus, Ohio. |
| 0:09.0 | It's one of my favorite things I get to do each year is bring together a small group of intellectually curious and interesting people who are open to rethinking their ideas, to being pushed, to being challenged, to having a growth oriented outlook on life in order to be better. |
| 0:29.0 | And this year I am doing my best to stack the room with amazing people, those who you'd want to know for life, hopefully. |
| 0:39.0 | And I will do my best to design the experience in a similar fashion to what I talked about recently with Dr. Matt Derton on last week's episode, so that you walk away feeling like you're in a much better position to lead both yourself as well as lead others. |
| 0:57.0 | So if you'd like to be in that room, send me an email Ryan at LearningLeader.com, put the words growth summit in the subject line and then tell me in the email why you'd like to be there. |
| 1:08.0 | So Ryan at LearningLeader.com, in the subject line, write growth summit and then share why you'd like to be in that room. All right, here we go. |
| 1:17.0 | Welcome to the LearningLeader show, presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. |
| 1:27.0 | Thank you so much for being here. Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of Mindful Monday. You, along with tens of thousands of other learning leaders from all over the world, will receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right. |
| 1:46.0 | You'll also receive the tales about how my book, The Pursuit of Excellence, will help you become a more effective leader text, Hawk to 66866 now on tonight's featured leader Dan Lyons as the New York Times best-selling author of Disrupted Labrats. |
| 2:03.0 | And most recently, STFU, the power of keeping your mouth shut in an endlessly noisy world, Dan was a writer for HBO's Hit Comedy Silicon Valley. |
| 2:14.0 | And before that was a journalist, that Newsweek Forbes and Fortune during this conversation we discuss. |
| 2:21.0 | The research behind what types of conversations make you happier and more fulfilled. |
| 2:28.0 | Then how to become a better listener, how to become a better negotiator, and Dan shares how his most recent work has made him a much better husband, which is most important. |
| 2:42.0 | Ladies and gentlemen, so good with Dan Lyons. |
| 2:48.0 | Dan, I've been a fan for years as I told you prior to recording, so it's great to finally have you here on the LearningLeader show. Welcome. |
| 2:56.0 | Well, thank you. Thanks for having me. It's nice to meet you too. |
| 2:59.0 | You wrote a book about being quiet and shutting up. |
| 3:04.0 | And it reminded me of when I had Robert Green on this podcast, law number four of the 48 laws of power is always say less than necessary. |
| 3:16.0 | And I gather based on reading your book that you wrote this maybe for yourself, because you struggle with this. |
| 3:22.0 | Can you share more about your background on being a talk a hall like and potentially getting yourself in trouble because you talk too much? |
| 3:31.0 | Sure. And you know, Robert Green's book was an influence on me early on, because when I started sort of developing this hypothesis that talking less would be to my advantage. |
| 3:44.0 | Someone pointed me at his book and I thought, wow, there really is something to this because I originally said I started, started out hoping to avoid calamities. |
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