Great conversations

Having a great conversation with someone makes us feel inspired, energetic and positive about life. Let’s face it, it doesn’t always happen and sometimes it doesn’t happen often enough, but when it does, we recognise it straight away. ‘Wasn’t that a great conversation?’

I’m sure you have experienced this too, but what do these great conversations have in common? From my perspective, it is a combination of things, the ‘ingredients’ that you and the other person bring to it. Whilst we cannot control their ingredients, we can do a few things about our own:

• Great conversations require interest and attention so try to avoid getting distracted by your phone, the cute dog sitting in the corner of the room or anything else. We live in a world where there are plenty of stimuli and most of them are designed to grab our attention, so it does take effort to avoid them. Multi-tasking whilst trying to have a meaningful conversation is always a bad idea (and don’t get me started on the subject of multi-tasking! I’ll tell you about this another time).
• A conversation is a two-way stream. They talk, you listen. You talk, they listen. The clue is in there: two-way or no way! A conversation with yourself is called a monologue, not a conversation.
• Listen. How many times we have a conversation when we (or the other party) are not truly listening? This often becomes apparent when we have to repeat ourselves (or they do) or we say something that doesn’t solicit any sort of reaction when it would almost certainly do if someone was truly listening e.g. ‘can you pass me that glass?’ – blank stare. OK then!
• Following the flow of the conversation is also key. How many times we get stuck on a point just because in our head we are rehearsing what we might say next? This often happen in the context of work conversations or when we are having an argument. Preparing our response whilst the other person is talking is not conducive to having a great conversation. Why? Have a guess! Because if we are rehearsing, we are not listening!
• Finally – enter each conversation with a beginner’s mind and you will almost certainly learn something during this process – either about yourself, the other person or the subject matter.

I hope you’ll have some great conversations!

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash