English

Theodore Zeldin is one of those fascinating people who, through the course of his life and career, has acquired a deep understanding of the world, of people and organisations. He is passionate about conversation and a strong believer of how conversation and mutual understanding can trigger the big revolution required to reduce the negative impact cultural differences may have in politics, society and business. He is the founder of The Oxford Muse Foundation, a “foundation to stimulate courage and invention in personal, professional and cultural life”.

Theodore Zeldin has kindly agreed to answer some questions around the topic of Conversation.

You once said: “Conversation is a meeting of minds with different memories and habits. When minds meet, they don’t just exchange facts: they transform them, reshape them, draw different implications from them, engage in new trains of thought.” Is conversation a product of social networks or a requisite for social networks to take shape?

The present day obsession with expanding social networks has diverted attention from the quality of those networks, and from the quality of the relationships they establish. Networks for competitive advantage are unlikely to have much moral content, or to be a stimulus to the imagination or a contribution to a more beautiful life. So they are not as useful for business as is assumed, once you accept that business is more about the quality of people’s lives than about immediate short-term profit for the corporation.
My own research suggests that the most valuable kind of interaction is between two individuals who try to be honest with each other, thereby establishing trust, which is necessary as much for economic as personal relations. Most people assume they know instinctively how to talk. But talk is different from conversation, and that has to be learned and practised, and is enhanced by a broader culture and an expended curiosity. So I have been helping people of all social categories to improve their conversation by organising Conversation Meals. At these, each person is placed randomly with someone he or she does not know, or knows only very superficially. They are given a Menu of Conversation, which has 25 topics arranged like a restaurant menu. They choose a topic, discuss it, and move on to another. The Menu prevents them gossiping or engaging in trivial talk. The topics are about their deepest concerns, in every aspect of life. They talk for at least two hours. The results are astonishing.
People say they have few such opportunities to get to know a person really well, and in the process to understand themselves better. We have done these conversations for many international corporations, government departments, organisations, municipalities and institutions of many kinds, in many countries, from China and India to Europe and Canada.
It is what businesses need if they are to move from being organisations which just have meetings - which take up an increasingly large proportion of executives’ time, without improving relationships, - into becoming conversation companies, where individuals can understand better the reactions of colleagues and can get better collaboration when they propose ideas to one another individually rather than en masse. It may seem that there is no time for conversation, but in fact these conversations save time, because the results are superior.
I have recently been organising such Conversations in IKEA, which enable the firm’s customers, as well as its staff, to create a more trusting community.

What is the role of stories in conversation?

I have studied history for many years, so I do not find “stories” the best way of improving conversation. It is important to learn lessons from the past. Telling anecdotes can distract from that. Many of the disasters of business come from repeating the mistakes of the past. It is more important for people to know where they are going, not just where they come from, and to draw conclusions from the past so as to be able to say what is possible and what is not. Thinking lucidly is more important than story-telling.

Office layout has a huge impact on the social dynamics of work. You strongly defend that the same happens with conversation (“The way we talk at the office or factory shapes the work we do”). How do the two relate?

Good conversation requires concentration and interaction without distraction. The architects who create little passages or open offices hoping this will improve relations have too elementary an idea of what good relations are.
Conversations need privacy, so that people can say what they normally would not say. They need time, because the deeper reflections emerge slowly.

What is your view regarding the role of technology (e.g. mobile phones, television, the Internet) in conversation? Is it hindering or is it helping?

In the past technology often reinforced existing habits and customs. The Twitter and Facebook phenomenon encourages very brief and often trivial interaction. I am now trying to adapt the Internet to promote less superficial conversation, and my revised website will I hope mark an advance on the existing ones. It should be ready within a month.

If geography is now hardly a barrier to business internationalisation, cultural differences is still perceived as a big challenge. And that is even more important when it comes to conversation. How should organisations approach that challenge?

They need to devote much more attention to the difficulties of collaboration and the possibility of misunderstanding. I have been developing conversations designed to make them more aware of the difficulties and opportunities, using video to illustrate the obstacles. I have most recently developed a course on collaboration with China, since that is obviously going to be a major challenge.

Illustration by Theodore Zeldin

“Birthday of Strangers” (2007) and “Feast of Strangers” (2009): two interesting projects celebrating the power of conversation. Have they met your expectations?

Yes, the results have been wonderful, and have aroused great enthusiasm.
The Feast of Strangers on 22 August will I hope become an international event, celebrating the fact that we have much to learn from strangers.
Organised tourism has so far had only very moderate success in improving intercultural understanding. I should like to collaborate with hotels to introduce this idea to their clients, and to develop hotels into cultural centres, to become Muse hotels. Now that business is not so good, it is a good time to embark on this modernisation.

Does it make any sense for organisations to organise events, along the same lines, for their employees?

Yes, organisations can profit in many ways by organising Conversations for their workers, executives, cusomers and suppliers. My experience with IKEA for example has shown that it can make a profound difference not only to relationships, but also to the efficiency of contacts with suppliers etc..

Yours has been a fascinating journey: history, culture, emotions, conversation. The chain is varied but one can easily see the linkages. What comes next?

I have been invited to lecture in business schools, corporations, governments. I was last year invited to advise the president of France on his legislative strategy, in a commssion which prepared 300 laws for him, which are now passing through parliament. But politics cannot make the most profound changes that are needed; laws cannot change deep-rooted mentalities. The big revolution of our time is taking place in the private sphere, where men and women are slowly learning to treat each other as equals (whereas in the public sphere inequality is increasing, and we are going back to the aristocratic age; according to the UN, 85% of the world’s wealth is now owned by 10% of its population). In private people are learning to talk with their children in a new way. Business has a lot to learn from private life.
So my Foundation, the Oxford Muse, is focusing not only on improving conversation and mutual understanding, personally, professionally and interculturally, but also on introducing new approaches into business strategy, because people spend much of their lives at work, and business leaders now have new opportunities to contribute to society more broadly. Most professions were invented long ago. They often do not respond to contemporary aspirations. One by one, each one needs to rethink its goals and satisfactions. That is the big agenda.
Individuals are no longer what they used to be, each is unique. That makes a big difference to how they work. Each one is an enigma. There are six billion people whom we need to discover. We are now in the same position as the scientists of the last century, discovering the different elements and molecules of the natural world.
So there is no need to feel lost or aimless. There is a wonderful adventure before us.

Note: A translation of this interview is available in Portuguese.