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Technology writers fell over themselves to praise the “extraordinary”, “powerful” and “magical” virtual reality headset that Apple unveiled last week.
But some also admitted to feeling “oddly lonely” and perplexed after wearing the $3,499 goggles, which can apparently transform the experience of watching a home video or a movie.
“This isn’t something I’ll do with my partner,” wrote one reviewer after sampling the device’s cinema-like charms. “This still gives off a use-on-your-own vibe.”
The contraption therefore strikes me as approximately the last thing needed in a world where technology is already driving diabolical levels of distraction and disconnection.
If history is a guide though, we will let this new tech wave, or something else like it, roll over us, just because it can. All of which is a reminder that, from the boardroom to the schoolroom, you can never learn enough about how to communicate well.
I was alerted to this the other day when a friend abruptly asked if I thought of myself as a radiator or a drain.
She was talking about the persistent idea that there are two types of people in the world: radiators who exude warmth and energise those around them, and self-absorbed, negative drains who do the opposite.
The concept is alluring because it seems so recognisable. We can instantly think of bosses, colleagues and friends who either radiate or drain.
At least, we think we can. In fact, both types of behaviour can exist in the same person. As my other half will attest, I can be a right drain when I get home from a long day of radiating at work.
What matters is having the self-awareness to understand the impact of your behaviour, and how to moderate it.
Company executives have long paid good money to learn such skills from corporate leadership coaches such as Elke Edwards.
She has spent decades training FTSE 100 clients and, as she told me last week: “Any kind of leadership development worth its salt teaches people this concept of conscious choice.”
Gaining this knowledge seems unlikely to be enhanced by spending hours with a set of Apple goggles clamped to your head. Ditto the hours we already spend texting, posting and scrolling on the small screens we are glued to.
And that raises a question for the school children who are among the most distracted tech users. Although it is important for leaders at the top of their careers to communicate well, shouldn’t this skill be taught in classrooms too?
As it happens, it is, up to a point. Edwards’ firm, Ivy House, runs leadership courses at Eton and other big private schools. But it also has a corporate sponsorship programme that offers training in a range of state schools.
Edwards says the results can be life-changing for underprivileged students.
She tells the story of a pupil with a Saturday job in a shop who had deployed what she had learnt about using “radiator energy” to talk about herself with a customer, who turned out to run a large local organisation. The customer was impressed enough to offer the student work experience she would have struggled to secure otherwise.
Clearly it would be better if any school could offer such help, and hundreds in the UK now can, largely thanks to efforts from charities that promote “oracy”, or the ability to use spoken language effectively.
But many more are needed, according to advocates such as Neil Mercer, emeritus professor of education at the University of Cambridge.
He says, correctly, that oracy ought to be taught as widely as the maths skills Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has been championing. “I wish I had been taught oracy at school like I was taught maths. I was never taught how to make a speech in public, yet I do it all the time.”
Mercer says oracy teachers do not talk of radiators and drains. But they do believe transformative levels of self-confidence come from learning how to speak, listen and converse well.
Many oracy skills will sound familiar to any executive who has been through a leadership course. Address a large audience persuasively. Chair a meeting effectively. Make small talk with strangers. And one more thing: really listen to people and make them feel listened to.
Preferably without a headset.
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