The Art of Conversation

Are you routinely stuck listening to people who seem to go on and on endlessly? Do you often have to interrupt someone mid-sentence because they’re off on some tangent? Does it seem like people are always wasting your time explaining things you already understand? Do many of your attempts at conversation seem to end badly, where you get the sense the other person isn’t feeling good about you?

These are signs that you may not be the world’s best conversationalist.

Culturally unconversational

Don’t feel too bad if this applies to you. Society as a whole seems to have lost its ability to sit still, listen, reflect, and then speak.

We are so busy multi-tasking that we don’t engage with our dinner companions, instead disappearing into our phones. We skim articles instead of reading. We only half listen to our favorite TV show or podcast. We’ve gotten so good at assuming we already know what’s being communicated that we don’t really want to listen—much less think about things carefully.

Talk show hosts used to have a talent for getting their guests to open up and tell stories. The hosts just made the guests seem interesting. Today’s hosts won’t shut up. They’re in such a hurry to tell their next joke that they interrupt guests mid-sentence and leave the audience waiting for the end of a story that will never arrive.

And we’re all in such a hurry to do what, exactly? Misunderstand everything?

Conversation requires understanding

Conversation is meant to be a two-way affair. You pass ideas to someone else, and they use your ideas combined with their own to pass something back to you. Hopefully, that new something will enhance your thinking on the topic.

For this to work well, each person needs to know their message was correctly received—otherwise the response they get will be irrelevant, and the conversation becomes frustrating. So people look for confirmation that their message got through before they consider their “turn” complete.

If the speaker doesn’t see signs that the listener got their message, they’ll keep talking in an effort to get through. So if you find lots of people rambling on in your company, it suggests you aren’t giving them sufficient reason to think you understood.

Active listening in conversation

If your “message received” confirmation isn’t coming across clearly, that is fixable by adding some active-listening behaviors.

CAUTION: Interruption is not active listening

Interruptions differ from active listening because they shift the focus off the speaker’s topic—active-listening techniques affirm, explore, or clarify their topic. Interruptions suggest whatever they’re saying isn’t important to you. Interruptions do NOT convince people that you understand.

It’s the difference between, “When you said you like music, did you mean…” vs. “Speaking of music, I saw the weirdest video today…” The first is directly on the speaker’s topic, so stopping them with that question says you need clarification on one point—but you got all the rest. The second interruption changes their subject to yours, and it tells them you didn’t understand or even care what they were trying to say.

Interrupting as a habit

As you make an effort to be a better listener, you might discover it’s surprisingly hard to stop interrupting. You may find yourself noticing only in hindsight that you did it again.

Why?

You may genuinely want to be helpful and feel it’s your job to jump in with “the answers” in every conversation. You may constantly look for errors to point out or ideas to object to because you see every conversation as a competition you must win by proving someone wrong. You may have a need to tell the world how smart or amazing you are by showing off your own knowledge and experiences.

Ironically, you’ll be more appreciated and your thoughts will have greater influence if you wait until someone has made their point or you are asked for input. Interrupting alienates people, so they are unlikely to care what you think anymore. They’ll feel frustrated, see you as rude, and simply want to end the discussion. But if you listen well, people will consider you a brilliant conversationalist.

Conversation among non-psychics

What if you’re sure you already know what the person is going to say? Given this belief, you’re just saving time by moving the conversation elsewhere, right?

The trouble with this trust in your psychic powers is that you may be wrong. Your emotional baggage will lead you to apply distorted filters to people’s messages. So when interrupting to avoid hearing what someone is actually saying, you are generally replacing their message with one that reflects your own beliefs.

So, “My performance review didn’t go well… because I arrived 25 minutes late” (the part you didn’t hear because you interrupted) in your mind became, “My performance review didn’t go well… because our manager is an idiot.”

And you interrupt with, “Yeah that guy sucks. An email he sent me yesterday just showed how he doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

So the person you’re talking to now knows you aren’t interested in their point, which was about their struggles with lateness. They’ll feel frustrated and devalued. They may try to correct your assumption, or they may just stop talking—depending on whether they feel like communicating with you is worth the effort. And they probably won’t be in a big hurry to talk to you again.

Think about how much you like talking with someone who keeps stopping you mid-sentence with proof they don’t care what you were about to say? Unless your goal is to drive people away, you might want to rein in your tendency to interrupt.

Great listeners have great conversations

If you want to be the sort of person people will enjoy talking to—one they’ll trust with their best, most-valued ideas—you need to be a great listener.

Great listeners attract interesting conversation because, like talk show hosts of old, their attention coaxes the interestingness out of people. That means better conversation and better-quality relationships because the communication becomes much deeper.

And great listeners make the people in their lives feel heard and important. This is essential to building healthy relationships and having happy families. It is also essential for building your kids’ self esteem and teaching them how to communicate effectively.

So why not give it a go? You already know what you think anyway—so if you don’t want to waste time, there’s no point in rehashing that. Whatever someone else has to say may be new. It may be invaluable. But you’ll never know unless you hear it.

I’m pretty sure we have one mouth and two ears for a reason.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.