Alan Alda

"The actor and founder of the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science traces his personal quest to understand how to relate and communicate better, from practicing empathy and using improv games to storytelling and developing better intuitive skills."--Publisher.

My Adventures in the Art and Science of Relating and Communicating

If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face?

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Award-winning actor Alan Alda tells the fascinating story of his quest to learn how to communicate better, and to teach others to do the same. With his trademark humor and candor, he explores how to develop empathy as the key factor. “Invaluable.”—Deborah Tannen, #1 New York Times bestselling author of You’re the Only One I Can Tell and You Just Don’t Understand Alan Alda has been on a decades-long journey to discover new ways to help people communicate and relate to one another more effectively. If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face? is the warm, witty, and informative chronicle of how Alda found inspiration in everything from cutting-edge science to classic acting methods. His search began when he was host of PBS’s Scientific American Frontiers, where he interviewed thousands of scientists and developed a knack for helping them communicate complex ideas in ways a wide audience could understand—and Alda wondered if those techniques held a clue to better communication for the rest of us. In his wry and wise voice, Alda reflects on moments of miscommunication in his own life, when an absence of understanding resulted in problems both big and small. He guides us through his discoveries, showing how communication can be improved through learning to relate to the other person: listening with our eyes, looking for clues in another’s face, using the power of a compelling story, avoiding jargon, and reading another person so well that you become “in sync” with them, and know what they are thinking and feeling—especially when you’re talking about the hard stuff. Drawing on improvisation training, theater, and storytelling techniques from a life of acting, and with insights from recent scientific studies, Alda describes ways we can build empathy, nurture our innate mind-reading abilities, and improve the way we relate and talk with others. Exploring empathy-boosting games and exercises, If I Understood You is a funny, thought-provoking guide that can be used by all of us, in every aspect of our lives—with our friends, lovers, and families, with our doctors, in business settings, and beyond. “Alda uses his trademark humor and a well-honed ability to get to the point, to help us all learn how to leverage the better communicator inside each of us.”—Forbes “Alda, with his laudable curiosity, has learned something you and I can use right now.”—Charlie Rose

Justin Jerome Price

In this day and age, the results of poor communication are very self-evident in our society. Be it in politics, where dysfunction and distrust of those with a differing view has led to verbal fights and paralysis over the most pressing of issues. Be it in medicine, where a doctor’s use of jargon and terminology when describing a procedure or medicinal aid can oft-confuse the patient about the treatment, which may lead to tragic results. Be it in technology, where if IT techs are unable to explain potential vulnerabilities to CEOs in a way the CEOs can understand, the CEOS may not act in time to prevent a data leak or data breach. Poor communication can have consequences that affect all of us. That is where Alan Alda comes in. One part memoir and one part scientific synopsis, his book, “If I Understood You, Would I have this Look on my Face,” explores his attempt to help foster good communications skills among scientists. Beginning with his first interview for the program Scientific American Frontiers, the book explores how Alda was inspired by his first interview to try to utilize some of his experience with acting and improvisation to help improve his communication with scientists. It also focuses on his attempt to teach science majors his improvisation techniques in order to improve their own communication skills, culminating in the creation of the Alda Center for Communicating Science. It also seeks to explore the scientific research behind communication, empathy, and theory of mind. And while it does have a breezy, conversational tone that is easy for many to understand, it is also hurt by this at times due to a lack of detailing the research methods and sources for the research. Still, the book is a pretty good advocate for good communication and explains many of the techniques Alda utilizes to help foster better communication, making it a good read for anyone who wants to improve their technique. 
 
The biggest strength of the book is its conversational tone. Alda creates a rapport between himself and the reader by utilizing anecdotes to help explain concepts. For example, he goes over the mistakes he made in the first interview that he did for Scientific American: Frontiers, where he interviewed a scientist about his solar-powered car. He began to realize that in spite of reading the scientist’s research paper and forming questions based around to show that he was interested in the scientist’s work, Alda was unintentionally insulting the scientist with his questions. This is an important part of the book for it not only explains the impetus for why Alda likes science and wants scientists to be able to communicate properly, but it also shows that Alda realized the need in himself to improve his communication. To show how he erred in his first attempt at interviewing scientists and how he sought to improve his own communication skills by drawing on his improvisation techniques and acting experience. The tone of the book definitely helps create a sense of relatability for the reader to these scenes and anecdotes and helps illustrate the points he wants to make about communication.
Another strength is that he does discuss the techniques utilized to help science majors improve their technique. He discusses mirroring, selling nonsense, and ball tossing in great detail for example. Thus if one, with a partner, wanted to improve their communication skills on their own, they would definitely be able to. For example, he goes in-depth about a session of mirroring he oversaw with another scientist that he did with a group of postgrads. Mirroring essentially is trying to match the movements of one’s partner, basically being a mirror image to that person. The technique is designed to help the pair, both the mirrorer and mirroree, to pay attention to body language. For the mirrorer, they have to pay attention to the person that they are following to make sure that they are able to match their movements. But for the mirroree, they have to make sure that they do not go too fast that the person following cannot keep up. Alda explained that the ultimate goal of this technique is for the pair to move in such synchronicity that there is no mirrorer or mirroree, follower or leader. That they are able to communicate on such a subvocal level about how to move and agree to move in that way that to anyone watching on the outside, they cannot tell who is leading whom. And through testing at the beginning of the sessions compared to the end of the sessions, they did notice a stark improvement in the students' ability to communicate and be empathetic. Yet this perhaps leads to the biggest issue of the book.

The biggest issue of this book is the fact that while Alda is very knowledgeable about the science, he does not utilize citations. Even the end of the book does not have a reference page. And while he does state that some of the research is still ongoing and while he does state that one should be careful about taking studies as a fact and understand that research is more about suggestions, I still felt that this was a weakness of the book. It is difficult to follow up on the science of communication if there are no references or further reading section for one to look at and peruse. 

There is also an issue with the structuring of the sections in the book. Early in the book, he mentions a concept known as Theory of Mind. This theory basically states that every individual person has thoughts that are privy to that individual person and that no one is privy to another individual person’s thoughts unless that person shares their thoughts with another person through verbal communication. And he mentions that young toddlers tend to have difficulties with this; he quotes an experiment in which young toddlers would see a woman place some cookies in the cabinet and then leave. Someone would come in and move the cookies to another spot. When the scientists asks where the cookies were, they would point to the spot that the cookies were moved to. When the woman came back and open the cabinet to see the cookies were gone, the toddlers were confused. They thought the woman should have known that the cookies were not there in the cabinet, but where it was actually moved to. Now, I mention this because the book unintentionally implies that adult’s do not have this problem. Alda even mentions that by the time a toddler becomes older, they begin to realize instinctively that people have their own thoughts. Yet towards the end of the book, it is revealed that even though people have an instinctive knowledge of theory of mind, they can fall into the fallacy of believing that a person knows what they know or share the same thoughts as they do about issues or things. Alda points out that this may be one of the reasons why experts, like doctors and scientists, utilize jargon when talking to someone like a patient or CEO who may not be as versed in the data as they are. The expert does not recognize that the person may not be as knowledgeable about certain things as they are and thus, overwhelm the recipient with words that they may not understand. I feel that this section about jargon and the weakness of Theory of Mind among adults should have been pushed up to when the concept first appears in the book. By waiting until the end to discuss jargon and how it may be counterproductive to communication, he somewhat robs himself of the ability to better illustrate how jargon can be detrimental to communication if the person is not a part of the group that uses said jargon. 

Even with these issues, this is a well-done, heartfelt book. Alan Alda’s ability to explain communication in such a comprehensible, yet breezy way is definitely a strength. And while there is no citations to the research he talks about in the book, you can tell that he does have an understanding of the scientific principles behind the experiments. Thus, I would recommend Alda’s book.

Nick Gracilla

Alda interviewed thousands of scientists as a host for PBS’ Scientific American Frontiers and founded the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook. The surprise: techniques and games developed in theater and improv help communicators, too, by better understanding their audiences, being more receptive to feedback, and improving empathy. If you grew up watching MASH, you can’t but hear Alan’s voice here: straightforward, funny, honest. It’s as much a biography as a discussion of theories of communications. Recommended, but I wish there were citations for the many referenced studies.

Sierra Nguyen

Alan Alda did a fantastic job at applying his own lessons that he is trying to deliver to readers, while writing the book, especially when explaining concepts to his audience who may not have a ton of prior knowledge about the subject of communication. 

I have learned more about the importance of paying attention and tuning into the person(s) in front of you; and talking while also caring about how well you are delivering your knowledge and how well your audience is getting what you say.

There is more than that in the book, which makes it a great source for scientists - whom Alan Alda addressed many times in this book - to be aware of their audience, because while science is important, just as important is how science is delivered and the people at all walks of life can actually understand what scientists have found.

Some of my favorite quotes from the book:
- "Communication doesn’t take place because you tell somebody something. It takes place when you observe them closely and track their ability to follow you. Like making a sculpture out of space, communication is a group experience."
- "You picture an audience and think, What are they already aware of? Where should I start? How deep should I go? What are they actually eager to know? If I start too far in, will I be using concepts they don’t really understand?"
- "There’s something about having knowledge that makes it difficult to take the beginner’s view, to be able to think the way you did before you had that knowledge. And unless you’re aware that you actually know something the other person doesn’t know, you can be at a disadvantage. When you forget you know more than they do, there’re a tendency to undervalue your position."
- "I hope they’ll pay attention not so much to the mechanical things, like a sudden change of pace in a talk or a sudden change in volume of their voice. I hope they’ll pay attention, instead, to the fundamental source of that pacing and volume, which is the connection with the other person. That connection makes us respond like a leaf in the breeze to whatever is happening in the faces of those in front of us."

Safiya 

And I finally decided to get a real book about being a good listener, it always occurs to me that I miss a lot in a conversation only because I was mentally developing my own ideas to give the best response or when it is funny to ace that punchline... Not knowing that what counts the most in a conversation is being careful to what you are being told. This book was on the New York Times bestselling author list, I was reticent to read it at first.. but it turned out to be a good, funny and over all helpful book... 

This was an engaging book that inspired me to put it into practice. It's adorned with studies, the author himself founded a communication institute...
"Parler est un besoin, écouter est un art".
One way to excel at communication is to listen more and give time to yourself to relate to what you're being told: empathy.

If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face? My Adventures in the Art and Science of Relating and Communicating

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