10 WAYS TO HAVE A BETTER CONVERSATION Celeste Headlee

- Have you unfriended someone on Facebook because he/she said something offensive
about politics, religion, child care, food?
- Do you know at least someone that you avoid just because you dont want to talk to
him/her?
- What was the advice of Henry Higgens for having a conversation: stick to the weather and
your health.
- Climate changing, anti-vaccine, are not safe either
- Conversation x argument
- This world where even the most trivial of issues have someone fighting both passionately
for and against it is not normal.
- What does research show: this moment we are more polarized and divided than we ever
had been in History, we are not listening to each other and we are making decisions based
on what we already believe
- A conversation requires a balance between talking and listening and somewhere along the
way we lost that balance.
- Part of that is due to technology
- According to research: a third of American teenagers send more than a hundred texts a day
and most of them are more likely to text their friends then they are to talk to them face-to-
face.
- Paul Barnwell, a high-school teacher, wrote a piece where he says: conversational
competence might be the single most overlooked skill we fail to teach
- What is your definition of a coherent and confident conversation?
- Nobel prize winners, truck drivers, billionaires, kindergarten teachers, heads of state,
plumbers.
- Forget about: look the person in the eye, think of interesting topics, nod and smile to show
that youre paying attention, repeat back what youve just heard or summarize it
- There is no reason to show that you are paying attention if you are in fact paying attention
- What is a good conversation like: when you walk away feeling engaged and inspired, you
feel like youve made a real connection, youve been perfectly understood.

10 RULES FOR A REAL CONVERSATION:

1 dont multitask cell phones, tablets, your car keys, worries, be present
2 dont pontificate be open to a response, argument, push-back, growth. You have to
enter every conversation assuming that you have something to learn.

Pundits: conservatives are going to hate Obama and food stamps and abortion, liberals are
going to hate big banks, oil corporations and Dick Cheney.
The famous therapist Adam Scott Peck said: listening requires a setting aside of oneself,
and sometimes that means setting aside your personal opinion. Sensing this acceptance,
the speaker will become less and less vulnerable and more and more likely to open up the
inner recesses of his or her mind to the listener

Everyone you will ever meet knows something you dont.

3 open-ended questions: start your questions with who, when, where, why, how. Dont use
yes or no questions, let them describe.
4 go with the flow: thoughts will come to your mind and you need to let them go out. Dont
change the topic or stop the sequence of the conversation.
5- If you dont know, say that you dont know: be careful about what you claim to be an
expert in and what you claim to know.
6 dont equate your experience with theirs: dont talk about yourself when people are
talking about their problems. All experiences are individual. Conversations are not a
promotional opportunity
7 try not to repeat yourself: dont rephrase a point over and over
8 stay out of the weeds: People dont care about the years, names, dates, details
9 Listen: if your mouth is open, you are not learning
Why dont we listen to others: wed rather talk, we get distracted.
The average person talks about 225 words per minute. We can listen to 500, so our mind is
filling the other 225 words while we listen.
Most of us dont listen with the intent to understand, we listen with the intent to reply
10 be brief: a good conversation is like a miniskirt: short enough to retain interest, but long
enough to cover the subject.