5 tips for great conversations

[beth_leonard]

Sometimes it's easier to write things out than to lie awake thinking about what I'd write. At Peter's parent visiting day, the children were given an optional assignment by the drama teacher to write articles for the newspapers that the kids are going to have printed for the Upper Elementary production of "Newsies." These are filler articles, but they might actually get read. Parents and kids were encouraged to contribute complete articles over the next several weeks that fit the topics "5 tips for..." or "How to..." or "8 Reasons to..." I received the distinct impression she wasn't expecting many submissions, and wordiness is not a problem.

I couldn't help brainstorming and now committing to paper the following tips. Some of these are from college, others are ones I've learned along the way.

5 tips for great conversations
by Peter Leonard's mom

Have you ever walked up to a group of people and felt like they didn't want you there? Have you ever felt uncomfortable and embarrassed talking to someone? or accidentally made someone else feel embarrassed while talking to you? Would you like to become excellent at and comfortable with talking to others? Here are 5 tips for having a great conversation:

#1. The 2-minute linger rule: Whenever you approach a group of people who are already talking, linger and listen without saying anything for at least 2 minutes. Resist the temptation to jump in and say, "Who are you talking about? What happened?" If you linger for 2 full minutes, chances are that just by listening you'll figure out from context what happened. It's like solving a mystery from the clues. If after 2 minutes, you still can't figure it out, or the other people haven't asked what you need, then it's ok to interrupt and ask questions. If you linger before you leap in and talk, people will not look annoyed when you come near them.

#2. The 10-hour looks rule: Never comment on or ask about someone's looks until after you have had 10 hours of conversations with them, unless they bring it up first. This is generally true about people's clothing, but it is especially true about things a person can't change, such as baldness, skin color, physical disabilities, or wearing glasses. If the checkout clerk at the grocery store has a big scar on her cheek, don't comment on it. Even saying something nice like, "That scar makes you look so cool!" can be annoying to the other person, because she probably hears comments like that 10 times a day. Your comment is not unique or helpful. Bite your tongue unless they look seriously ill and you can help.

After you have known a person for a while, and eaten lunch together for an hour a day for 2 weeks -- talked about different things for at least 10 hours -- if you find you still must know about the part of them that looks unique, only then you may comment. If a friend gets a new haircut, it's ok to say, "Do you like your new haircut?" but if you see a stranger with an unusual cut, don't say anything, because you don't know what led to it, and what might make them feel bad.

#3. The pets conversation: If you can't talk about other people's looks, and you don't know them, what can you talk about? Here's a great conversation starter: "This morning my pet...." Fill in the blank with the best thing your pet did all day. "... ate all his food and gave me cute puppy eyes when he wanted more," or "... jumped up on the counter and knocked over a glass of water." Before you've finished speaking, everyone you're trying to talk to will want to share stories of their pets.

#4. The YouTube video conversation: What if you don't have a pet? Surely you've seen a YouTube video. These can be harder to describe, so you might want to practice summarizing it before you join a group and start talking. "Yesterday I saw the funniest YouTube video about a brother and sister who could play the piano while sitting backwards. My sister would never do that with me." If no one else responds with a video that they like, you can add, "What's the best video you've ever seen?" This gets the conversation going and it can branch out to many different topics. People can talk about piano or other YouTube videos.

#5. Listen and make eye contact: Don't forget to listen. Starting a conversation with people you don't know well is wonderful, but make sure that you're not the only one doing the talking. If there are 4 people, you'll be talking at most 1/4 of the time and listening 3/4 of the time. Try to pay attention to what they're saying, and not just thinking about what you'll say next. Trust yourself to say what you want to say when your turn comes. Make eye contact with the person speaking, instead of looking around or looking past them. Even if they're talking to the whole group and not specifically looking back at you, they can tell if you are not interested. They're more likely to look at you and give you another turn to speak when they're done if you're looking directly at them.


...
I feel like it needs a closing sentence, but that will have to inspire me another day.

Comments

[elflynn.livejournal.com]

This is really good advice!

[beth_leonard]

Thanks!
--Beth

[steuard.livejournal.com]

I like this a lot! I wonder if I could use some variation on it to convince myself to be better about joining conversations today. (I feel terribly awkward inserting myself into conversations that other people are already having. This causes me no end of discomfort at, say, physics conferences. I still try, but man, it's hard.)

[beth_leonard]

The tip that I didn't add for good conversations (because this is aimed at 4-6th graders) is the "Car accident" conversation. "I saw a car accident on the way to work and the front was totally smashed up but the people looked fine..." "I was almost in an accident last week when someone...." Car accident conversations also tend to be self sustaining. It's a good one to use when talking about the weather has been used up. I don't tend to start them because you never know when someone has recently lost a loved one to a car accident, I use this conversation only in case of emergencies, but there was a time at an HP social with older pocket-protected engineers that everything else was falling flat and I've certainly seen this one work very well when people who don't know each other are standing around and the situation expects them to socialize.

I'd be interested in feedback on the 10-hour looks rule. I invented that one myself, based on my life experiences. I've decided it's definitely impolite to comment on someone's looks that you don't know well, from male whistles, to asking someone on the bus you've just met if you can feel their hair, or telling a pregnant woman that she looks like she's about to burst, or the secretary that you like her necklace. But there comes a level of friendship when you feel like you ought to know the backstory, or you can compliment a friend on their new Minecraft T-shirt they got for their birthday.

A more nuanced version of this would be not to comment unless you have repeated interactions with someone and the other person invites you to. For this, I'm thinking of the checkout clerk at the HP cafeteria who always had different amazing earrings. She was very chatty and clearly trying to learn English better and wanted to talk with people about things as she rang them up. A limited vocabulary back-and-forth conversation seemed to be what she wanted, so I think initiating a conversation about ear rings was not impolite. She did get comments multiple times per day, but seemed to actively seek them out, so that's different. I wouldn't have done it on the first day of meeting her however, but I didn't wait through 10 hours worth of lunch purchases to talk about earrings.

--Beth

[steuard.livejournal.com]

I don't think I'd dare use the "car accident" one. It's innocuous to most people (even to a lot of us who've been in a fairly nasty one), but there are guaranteed to be people for whom the topic is absolutely traumatizing, for a variety of reasons. I'd be hesitant to raise a topic with that sort of associated risk purely for the sake of breaking the ice.

On a more positive note, I thought your "10-hour looks rule" made a lot of sense. Teaching about some sort of buffer like that seems like a really good idea, and this seems like a pretty decent rule of thumb.

But I just now realized that I hadn't quite fully thought about the "clothing" aspect. I don't think that I was transgressing when I said "Awesome shirt" to the student on campus whose T-shirt proclaimed "Neville would have done it in 5 books." And I once had a really nice conversation that started because someone in an elevator noticed my "Large Torso Collider" shirt and exclaimed, "Hey, where'd you get that? I don't think we even have that at the CERN gift shop!" So is there perhaps an exception to be made for clothing that is explicitly designed to indicate an interest or make a joke?

[beth_leonard]

Clothing is definitely a grey area. On the one hand, there's unwanted lewd whistles or other comments from strangers (see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1XGPvbWn0A ), and different people whistle at different thresholds of clothing. The whistling people think they're giving a compliment.

But on the other hand, if you go to Ren Faire dressed in the Queen's best, in part you're doing it so that people can see you and compliment you. I'd still never give a negative comment in either case. T-shirts are sometimes meant as conversation starters, and it's clearly a forgivable offense if someone says something about a comment-worthy shirt. I personally error on the side of caution, because you just don't know what led to wearing that shirt that day (yours didn't get washed, so you had to wear your brother's, someone threw up on the shirt you were wearing so you borrowed something from a friend) but generally, yeah, if you're wearing a shirt with a joke and someone comes up to you and says, "Great joke!" it shouldn't be impolite, and someone shouldn't take offense at a response someone makes to their shirt. Given the upcoming elections, I don't think I want to be commenting on people's political shirts unless they're good friends.

--Beth

[zdashamber.livejournal.com]

Bookmarking this because it's useful! And also I'll someday need to teach my kid to converse instead of just throwing her into the wilds and letting her fend for herself :)

A couple other tips you could throw in if you liked: "Ask 'wh' questions. Who/What/Where... also How. Turn your question into one of those." Those are questions that have to be answered with sentences, and sentences have a much higher chance of there being information in there that can prompt another conversational volley.

And, "have little stories about what you want to convey, but keep them to like 3 sentences while you suss out how interested the other person is." "This Sunday I managed the baby alone because my husband had to go into work all day. Baby and I went to the park and she waved at a homeless guy. He seemed happy about that." "I saw this hilarious YouTube video based on the cats vs cucumbers video... Cats were scared of cucumbers because they looked like snakes? The takeoff was scientists pretending to be scared of cucumbers, jumping on top of freezers or freaking out at lab meeting." Obviously, ancedote-telling is hard to do well...

[beth_leonard]

Thanks!

I think I could go up to 10 tips easily. The wh questions a good one but require nuance I think, because it is easy to make them sound like you're grilling the other person. Only ask the question if you are genuinely interested in the answer and can use body language to show that you care. Don't keep asking questions if the other person is giving short answers and doesn't seem interested in talking to you.

--Beth

[beth_leonard]

PS. Kid? Congrats! Clearly we have fallen out of touch. The last LJ post I see was from 2011.

--Beth

[zdashamber.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm on Twitter and (a bit) FB these days. Kid is a year old, so far so good... :)

Brainstorming more helpful tips

[beth_leonard]

The next set of tips are starting to form in my mind. It's so much easier to think of what not to say than what TO say. When no one has anything to say that is safe and relevant, everyone looks down at their phones and tunes out the strangers in front of them for the friends (electronic and real) in the phone.

6. Car accident conversation: for emergency use only.
7. Invite others to join in!
8. Use questions with appropriate caution.
9. Start with a shared experience.
10. Using Humor: are you funny, annoying, or childish?
11. Mean isn't funny.
12. Pickup lines always sound like pickup lines.

--Beth