tiny gigantic

Lately I’ve noticed that I’ve become super sensitive—even a little bitchy—around bad conversation. I mean conversation of all kinds, from branding and advertising to small talk between acquaintances and deep talk between friends. But it isn’t the subject matter that bothers me. It’s the manner in which those conversations happen or don’t happen.

Here’s what I mean:
Once I was sharing a hot tub with two friends, both known for their propensity to talk. It seemed at first like they were talking to each other. But as we spent more time in the water it began to feel to me like they were talking at each other. They weren’t listening to what the other was saying. Or if they were, they weren’t engaging with it. They weren’t responding to it. They were so focused on expressing their own personal point of view that what they were having stopped being a conversation and became a competition for air time. After a while, you could tell they weren’t even talking about the same thing.

Now, it’s normal for people to offer up their experience of a given topic—that’s one way of empathizing. And empathy is good. But most often, if you’re talking about yourself, you’re not listening to someone else. Sure, an anecdote about your experience is fun and sometimes useful, but conversation works best when you’re as unselfish as possible. It works best when you share the spotlight, taking turns talking and listening:

Shut up and listen.
Seriously. Shut up. That means more than just quieting your mouth. It means more than simply waiting your turn to talk. It means quieting the noise in your head so that you can really hear what the other person is saying.

Now prove you were listening.
That’s right. Show me you care. Ask genuine questions that send the conversation in new directions. Talk to me about what I’m talking to you about. Otherwise, we’re just making noise.

Don’t worry, you’ll get your turn.
It’s not likely that anyone will listen to you, if you don’t listen to them first. Because when you really pay attention, and you show it, you build trust. You build rapport. You get a reputation for being smart, and thoughtful even, no matter that you’ve said very little. And suddenly people will want to hear what you have to say.

Whether you’re an organization trying to start conversation in a community, or a dude at a party, a good conversation is a hard thing to make. I’m still figuring this out myself, but I’ve got a feeling that if you just listen, if you really respect the attention you’re getting (someone chose to talk to you, of all people!), and if you talk to them about them, you’ll make all kinds of unexpected friends. Which might be what conversation’s all about.

03/18/08 by josh kamler

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 18th, 2008 at 5:04 pm and is filed under Thinking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.