A short podcast episode by Dr. Ed Torrey reflecting on how the conversational hypnotherapist model and everyday small talk can open deeper rapport. Central anecdote: a hairdresser reports seeing more parents (especially moms) cry when they unexpectedly look their child in the eye during a haircut — a symptom the host links to device-driven distraction. The episode argues that as technology accelerates, we should deliberately cultivate unchanging human skills: listening, presence, and deeper interpersonal connection.
Chapters
This is Dr. Torrey.
Welcome to the Influence Every Day show, where we make every day better, and we influence for good.
You may have heard me mention before that I think the conversational hypnotherapist model of conversation is one of the most powerful tools we have in our tool belt when it comes to our relationships with other people and influencing others for good. So when I was doing my training to be a conversational hypnotherapist, my teacher used an analogy for small talk as it being a hallway full of doors. In other words, as you're walking down this long hallway full of doors, you. You have an opportunity to open any one of them. And that small talk is kind of like that. Somebody talks about the weather, they talk about a sporting event, they talk about something that happened in current events at work or at home. And each one of those doors is a possible opening for you to establish deeper rapport or deeper connection. And so if you view small talk that way, it can be a really powerful metaphor for you to enhance your conversations, your networking, your leadership, and also just general interactions with other people. Now, if you really think about it, there are some professions that lend themselves to being better at conversation. And now it's not always true that they are better at conversation, but because of the nature of their work, they have an opportunity to be the best conversationalists on the planet. And one of those groups is that of hairdressers or barbers. If you think about it, they have a captive audience. They're there in the chair while they're working on their haircut or their perm or whatever. They're working on doing the hairdressing thing. As they're doing that, they have a captive audience. And oftentimes it can be a very social place. There might be banter back and forth with either other clients or other people who are also hairdressers or barbers or what have you. And so it can be a great place of conversation. It's not always the highest yield conversation, but it is certainly a place where, if you view conversation as a. As a sort of like a. An asset, a tool, a something that's enjoyable, something that's fun, you can get better and better at it in those settings. So one day I was at a basketball court where I was watching my kids play basketball, and there was somebody sitting next to me who happened to be a hairdresser, one of the other moms, and she was having side conversation in between timeouts or whatever. And. And while we were talking, first of all, I didn't necessarily really know what to talk about besides basketball and kids growing up and all that stuff. But I thought, hey, maybe there's an opportunity to learn. I mean, she's a hairdresser, so maybe she can. I can learn something. So I asked her this question that I love to ask people because it's so telling. I asked her, how has your work changed in the past 15 to 20 years? How has your work changed in the past 15 to 20 years? Now, I could have easily just said five years or 10 years because certainly the world is changing and changing fast. But I asked her this question. How has your work in hairdressing, cutting people's hair, doing that sort of thing? How has it changed in 15 to 20 years? And she paused. She kind of like closed her lips. She looked down at the floor and she said, I see more parents crying. I said, what? She said, I see more parents crying, especially moms. I said, wait, wait, What? Like this? What do you mean? What does this mean? And she said, well, when I have kids in the chair, they could be 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, 15, 16 years old, and they're sitting in the chair, I have to adjust the chair and adjust things for my back so. So that I don't have to bend over and things like that. And so I turn them around and I move the chair so that I don't have to move as much for my own comfort and my own body posture and safety. And so sometimes, though, I have to turn the chair towards the parent. And they almost always say the same thing. Oh, my gosh, she looks so much older. Wow, he looks so much older. He's really grown up. And then their eyes well up and sometimes it's full on tears. And I said, why do you think that is? Is it you've cut their hair, you've changed the way they look, You've made them look older. She's no, I haven't even started yet. I was like, what? This doesn't even make sense to me. Explain this. What do you think it is? She said, I think it's the first time that they've looked each other in the eye in a very long time. Because at any one time throughout the day, one of them has their face in a device looking at their phone scrolling. She's like, now, when the child has to have their head propped up because I'm about to work on it, their head is up. And if their mom or father happens to look at them at the same time, while their head is up, they're both looking at each other for one of the first times in a very long time. Now, how profound is that? It's like it's the first time they're both looking up from their devices at the same time. That is. That is crazy to me. And she said it's not uncommon. It's like I asked her what has changed in the past 15 to 20 years, and this is what she came up with. It wasn't technology. It wasn't the pace of the work. It wasn't who's coming in or what types of cuts they want or what kind of styles they do or anything like that. It was this, that parents are crying. And she thought it was because they're looking at their devices. Now. If you think about what's going on in the world, how fast things are changing, how fast technology is changing, business models, care models, where we conduct business, who is conducting business, getting stuff delivered to your home almost instantaneously, like all of these things are changing and they're changing fast. Certainly with the advent of virtual reality, augmented reality, digital voiceovers and dubbing and deep fakes, artificial intelligence and virtual meetings, all these things. Like the technology is changing fast, right? So along with it, though, what I submit to you is that we need to get really good at what doesn't change. In the midst of a sea of change and rapid change, we should get really good at what doesn't change. And what doesn't change is, is how to move people, how to influence them, how to have rapport, how to have good, deep relationships with the people that are most important to us. We need to get really good at it. And you know what's going to happen. The more technology advances and changes, we are going to thirst for real human connection. And that this hairdresser said that I see more parents crying, and she thinks it's because people are finally looking each other in the eye. Is a deep warning sign to all of us that we need to put the devices down. We need to put the devices down. You see, even. Even if you just think a few years ago, maybe 10 years ago, when we use the computer or the Internet, we would search for things. And when we had to search for things, we had to know what we were searching for. We had to be deliberate, right? It was a deliberate conscious effort to get on, decide what you're going to look for and go find that thing using the search engines or other tools that are out there now, rather than searching, we're scrolling and as we scroll, we don't know what's next. And that's what keeps us engaged, because each time it's something slightly different, a little more different. Different pace, different energy, different people, different scene. Something's funny, something's awful, something that takes us to multiple different places. And what happens when you go from one place to another to another really fast, in a condensed time? We lose track of time. Time flies when you're having fun. The opposite is also true. When we experience time as flying, we find it more enjoyable. And that's what's happening when we're scrolling. The problem is we're not deliberate, and that means we're not deliberate when we're talking to other people. If you haven't heard the podcast episode on Ting, the Chinese word to listen to, go and listen to that. Too often we're on our devices and somebody says, did you hear what I just said? Yeah, I heard you, but you weren't listening. Sometimes when our child is trying to talk to us, especially our teenagers and our preteens, they might be talking to us about something that might seem inconsequential or innocuous, but that's actually a gateway. It's an entrance to another conversation. They may be leading up to something else that's important, and we're missing that moment. Take heed of that hairdresser's warning. Think about it. As I said at the beginning, hairdressers and barbers are sometimes the most phenomenal conversationalists. They're exposed to so many different types of people, different stories, different paths and all these things, and they can synthesize them and have conversation about them in a rich kind of way. And if that's what they're seeing, jeez, we need to wake up, put the devices down. We need to be more deliberate, more deliberate about our communication, more deliberate about our relationships, especially those that are most important to us. I'll see you in the next episode.
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