The Art of Conversation
By Tom Green, with Julia Markish & Roxy Wacyk
In my twenties, I was on conversational autopilot. Unfortunately the autopilot was faulty. I thought I knew pretty much everything, and couldn’t wait to share my insights with anyone I could trap for long enough. I always had a sharp comeback at the ready. If I didn’t, I was anxious people would think I was boring.
Looking back, I see that my autopilot was driving me into brick walls and sending me careening off bridges into deep gorges. I’ve been reflecting on what could have kept me on the road, and compiled five questions, the answers to which help me to navigate the Art of Conversation.
1) AM I A MAGNET OR A BULLHORN?
You’re at a cocktail party and you meet me for the first time. We spend 20 minutes together, during which I don’t ask you a single question. Not one. I learn nothing about you, but I make sure that you walk away knowing all about my obsessions with meditation and my favorite novel (Shantaram). You forget my name because I gave you no reason to care.
I was once told, “You already know what you know, so there’s a lot more to gain from learning what someone else does.” It took me a long time to start to really get this, and I still forget it sometimes.
This is the magnet versus the bullhorn: imparting information versus inviting others to share. In some situations, like debates, being the bullhorn makes sense. However, in day-to-day interactions, people are drawn to good listeners. Of course when we are total magnets we can seem secretive: sharing something of ourselves is important too. For many of us, though (myself included), becoming a little more magnetic is a great place to start.
2) AM I FENCING OR DANCING?
We all know people who need to be right. These are quick thinkers with facts (real or fake) at their fingertips. A conversation with them is like being unwittingly thrust into a fencing match. “Why I am fighting?” we think to ourselves, as we instinctively parry our opponent’s lunge and gleefully land a vicious counter-attack.
The awful thing about fencing is that it brings out the worst in me. I find myself spiralling into a whirlpool of debate, desperately clawing to escape while being sucked inexorably towards the center. It feels even worse if I’m the one who stirred up the whirlpool in the first place.
When we need to show others how smart we are, what does this say about our own insecurities? If we’re really smart, can we let differing viewpoints ‘just be’, without needing to resolve them?
Instead of fencing, let’s dance. When we express ourselves through dance, we’re on the same team, playing off of each other, helping each other look good, adjusting for each other’s mis-steps, and having fun.
As Anne Lamott said, “You can practise being right or you can practise being kind.” This is literally my favorite piece of advice, ever, bar none. I find that I like myself a lot more when I succeed in following it.
May I have this dance?
3) am i a sun or a black hole?
Sometimes I get excited. I’m expounding about the fascinatingly esoteric rules of cricket to anyone who will listen (which is nobody ever). Despite how adorable this is, has it occurred to me that other people might want to talk about their own culturally relevant hobbies?
When I get too fired up and dominant, it’s not two-way any more, because there’s too much energy coming from one place. I might talk at you for 10 minutes straight or fire questions at you and not let you finish the answers. Or maybe there are four of us and one takes over half the air-time. Either way, it’s no longer a conversation.
This is like being the sun. When you’re very close to the sun, you’re blinded by the bright light and can’t see anything else. I think suns often feel responsible for directing the conversation or keeping it going. Sometimes it’s hard to notice when we’re the sun. Everything looks brightly lit and fabulous from our vantage point.
Then there’s the opposite. There are those times when we suck the light out of a conversation. When we can’t think of anything to contribute, and our answers are monosyllabic. When we put in no energy and seem to suck the light out of a conversation, we are ‘black holes.’
This is a balance. As black holes, we can try putting out a little light. And as suns, if we can get comfortable with the idea of a moment of silence (the horror!), we’d discover new possibilities. If we turned down our brightness, we might find we can see the stars.
4) AM I a PLAYER OR a PUNDIT?
Contrast two familiar experiences. On the one hand, there’s that sense that someone isn’t so much listening as waiting for their turn to speak. This is like a pundit commentating on a sports game. They’re thinking ahead, speculating as to who might win, or reeling off stats about past games.
On the other hand there’s the feeling when someone is laser-focused on the conversation with you. This is the player. She is responding to the game moment by moment as it unfolds.
I think the difference between these two is how far they’re thinking ahead in the conversation. When we’re thinking ahead like the pundit, we’re not listening as much. When we’re in the present moment like the player, we listen. We let go of attachment to what we were planning to say, and curiosity fills the space that’s left behind. It takes confidence: you have to trust yourself that when the ball comes to you, you’ll know what to do with it. When we succeed at this, we respond with more relevant questions, we remember more, and our conversation partners want to talk with us again.
I found that taking improv classes helped me let go of planning my replies. There, I was taught to trust that if I listen carefully, I’ll know what to say when it’s time. This feels refreshingly free. By the way, a lot of people are afraid of improv as they think you have to be funny, but in fact when you apply the tools you learn in improv, humor emerges from the situation.
Oh, and let’s all try not to check our texts or Insta or Tik-Tok when we’re talking. We all know that’s bad, and many of us do it anyway. Yours truly is as guilty of this as the worst Millennial.
5) AM I a SURFER OR a DIVER?
Meet James. He just met Alice at a party and is trying to get to know her better.
James: “Where do you live?”Alice: “Bernal.”
James: “That’s a nice neighborhood.”
Alice: “Yeah, I like it. How about you?”
James: “I’m in the Mission.”
Alice: “Oh, I sometimes go to yoga in the Mission.”
James: “Oh nice, me too. So what do you do for work?”
Alice: “I’m a Product Manager. I like it, it’s fun. My company is working from home at the moment because of coronavirus.”
James: “Mine too.” …
So boring, I want to poke my eyes out. He’s surfing from one topic to the next. Let’s give him a chance to dive deeper. This time he’ll follow threads rather than always skipping to the next.
James: “Where do you live?”
Alice: “Bernal.”
James: “Awesome. How did you end up there?”
Alice: “Well let’s see, 2019 was a year of transitions, I wanted a new place, and I like the neighborhood.”
James: “Transitions - how was 2019 for you?”
Alice: “Generally it was good. I got a new job, which I like. My hamster Stan died in October, which was very sad - he was 4, which is very old for a hamster, and he had a good life. Still, it took me a while to get over it.”
James: “That’s great that you got a new job. I’m sorry to hear about Stan. It’s always so sad to lose a pet. How are you feeling now, if you’d like to share?”
Alice: “Yeah it is, I appreciate that. He was such a sweetie. I was really sad for a while, I missed his cute little face so much every day. Looking after him gave me a surprising amount of joy and purpose, which I feel a bit silly about because he was just a hamster. Now I’m mostly just grateful for the time I had with him.”
James: “I’m touched, thank you for sharing that.”
Alice: “Thanks for listening! How about you, how was your 2019?”
James: “Great in some ways, rough in others. I overworked myself in the last few months, which was stressful and bad for my health, but now I’m taking care of myself more...”
So. Much. Better. James is nailing it: instead of skipping from wave to superficial wave, James is beginning to explore the textured coral reefs and colorful fish in the depths of Alice’s world.
NOW WHAT?
All you have to do is picture yourself as a magnetic scuba-diving football player who has left her fencing foil on her surfboard and is positioned just the right distance between a sun and a black hole.
Hey, I never said it would be easy.
Icon credits: Eddy Wong, Jasmine Christine, AFY Sudio, Kiran Shasty, monkik, Batibull, Gan Khoon Lay, Creative Stall, Deemak Dakshina, Vadim Solomakhin from TheNounProject