Relating : it's the cake -- Theater games with engineers -- The heart and head of communication -- The mirror exercise -- Observation games -- Making it clear and vivid -- Reading minds : Helen Riess and Matt Lerner -- Teams -- Total listening starts with where they are -- Listening, from the boardroom to the bedroom -- Training doctors to have more empathy -- My life as a lab rat -- Working alone on building empathy -- Dark empathy -- Reading the mind of the reader -- Teaching and the flame challenge -- Emotion makes it memorable -- Story and the brain -- Commonality -- Jargon and the curse of knowledge -- The improvisation of daily life.
Summary:
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 Alan Alda has been on a decades-long journey to discover new ways to help people communicate and relate to one another more effectively. The result is this warm, witty, and informative chronicle of how Alda found inspiration in everything from cutting-edge science to classic acting methods. Alda reflects on moments of miscommunication in his own life, when an absence of understanding resulted in problems both big and small. Drawing on improvisation training, theater, and storytelling techniques from a life of acting and 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. Featuring games and exercises, this funny, thought-provoking guide 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. - from book cover
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.