Yes, and…
What Alan Alda taught me about communicating science
Joely Taylor and Alan Alda at the end of the one-day workshop in New York
In December 2019, I participated in a one-day course at the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science in New York. The course was called ‘Power Connection: Reshaping the Future for Women in STEM’. The focus was not just on communicating science. It also addressed challenges that female researchers might face in their scientific careers by using the acting method of improvisation as a tool to improving skills such as persuasion, negotiation, listening and presence.
Improvisation is unscripted acting. It uses heightened communication and listening skills to encourage spontaneous and genuine interactions between actors. Improvisation skills not only help you become a better listener, they also help you become more adaptable during conversations.
One of the techniques we were taught was one of the first rules of improvisation: using ‘Yes, and’ during our conversations.
For example, a researcher might say: ‘The rise in ocean levels is directly attributable to the rise in global temperatures.’
The listener might respond: ‘But I don’t believe the oceans are rising because of global warming.’
The researcher would then respond with a ‘Yes, and’, such as: ‘Yes, and there are other signs in the environment that things are changing, such as longer growing seasons for crops and the discovery of animals outside of previous habitats, like sailfish being found in the Gulf of Maine.’
Using ‘Yes, and’ stops the researcher from dismissing the listener’s perspective, and allows space to keep developing the narrative of the story the speaker is communicating.
When we practised the ‘Yes, and’ technique in the workshop, I was unsure how well it would work. I thought it might result in uncomfortable silences and create an opportunity for the other person to shut down the conversation. Instead, I found it worked incredibly well, especially in the harder scenarios we were put through. I think one reason it worked was simply because it kept the conversation open. Once a conversation is shut down, you can’t really restart it. But as long as a conversation is still active, communication can happen. Using ‘Yes, and’ keeps the conversation going, keeps the other person engaged because you aren’t shutting their opinion down, and allows both of you the opportunity to speak and to be heard.
Another focus of the workshop was to help us to refine our communications by knowing our audience and having a goal.
One thing I found, when working through the techniques to define my audience and goal, is that a narrative started to reveal itself. In thinking about what I wanted to communicate, and why the audience would want to listen to what I had to say, my own personality and passion started to emerge.
The personal connection with the research, and the narrative about how they got there, seems to help connect a scientist and their message with a listener.
That’s not to say that scientists have to be emotional. I pointed out that scientists are trained to remove emotion from their research, to ensure their work is objective and free of subjectivity. Alan Alda (yes, he was there with us for the whole workshop!) reminded us that there is a difference between becoming emotional yourself and evoking emotion in your audience. Which makes sense.
An audience is not going to get excited about science they can’t relate to, or that doesn’t evoke some sort of emotion or feeling for them. Whether that feeling is awe, wonder, or even doubt, without some connection, the audience won’t engage.
The workshop taught me that the connection between a scientist and an audience starts with authenticity: authenticity of the scientific message as well as of the person communicating that message. Practising this with the aid of improvisation techniques showed me that science communication is more effective when people are empathetic listeners, leading to better connections, better understanding and longer lasting learnings.
Yes, and…
