Conversation is a skill. Heres how to be better at it

Conversation is a skill. Heres how to be better at itConversation is a skill. Heres how to be better at itCeleste Headlee is a journalist, public radio host, and professional opera singer whose TED Talk on conversations has been viewed over 10 million times. She sat down with Heleos Editorial Director, Panio Gianopoulos, to discuss what makes a conversation good, how to connect with friends and strangers alike, and other crucial insights from her new book, We Need to Talk.This conversation has been edited and condensed. To view the full version, click the video below.Panio Conversation is a skill, and one we are actually quite bad at.Celeste Yes, naturally. Knowing how to have a good conversation is notlage information that you can just memorize and then youre done. As a skill, you have to practice it. You dont go to the gym just once. Its the same thing with conversation.We as human beings are not particularly great at listening when were born. Babies come out of the womb knowing ho w to scream, not listen, and it takes quite a while for parents to teach their kids to listen, right? So if youre bad at conversation- and you probably are- at least take comfort in knowing that its okay. Everybody has this problem.Ladders is now on SmartNewsDownload the SmartNews app and add the Ladders channel to read the latest career news and advice wherever you go.Panio I experience it every day because I have eight-year-old twins. One will talk in this ear and one will talk in the other ear about totally unrelated topics, and they wont even pause for each other.One of the things that I thought welches really intriguing in We Need to Talk was conversational narcissism. Maybe I just did it by bringing up the anecdote about my kids, but its when someone talks about something, and your conversation partner immediately brings up something personal or relative to them.Celeste Conversational narcissism is a scary term for something that just happens constantly, and the way that the r esearchers talk about it is a shift response or a support response. Either I can shift the attention to myself, or I can support what it is that youre talking about.Panio What would a shift example be?Celeste If you were to say, I have eight-year-old twins and they talk in my ear all the time, and I would say, God, I know what you mean. My son talks to me - and we start talking about my kid. As opposed to, I have a kid, too. What is that like for you? Im bringing something up, but its in support of what youre saying.Panio Its a more of a back and forth.Celeste Exactly. A conversational narcissist is the one that keeps taking the ball from the game of catch and not ever passing it back.Just listening to somebody is an act of love.Panio Yeah. I had a fear while reading your book Am I doing ansicht things? Do I have these conversational bad habits, and Im just unaware of them? Whats a way that I could find out? Day-to-day, your friends dont give you feedback and say, You know, you ta lk way too much about yourself.Celeste Right. Or they do- when theyre ready to not be friends with you anymore.Theres this great exercise, and its inspired by Pat Wagner, an expert on conversation. Make a list of the five things that people do in a conversation that annoy you the fruchtwein. Maybe interrupt you all the time, maybe only give yes or no answers, whatever they are. Five things that are most annoying to you.Then go to the people closest to you. Do not tell them what the list is. Just say, Okay, how many of these things do I do when Im in conversation with you? You will usually discover that many of the things that annoy you the most when other people do them are things that you are doing.Thats partly because a conversation, at its worst, is a power struggle.Panio What do you mean by that? Someone is trying to dominate the other person?Celeste Exactly. Its part of that conversational narcissism. Its this pull of attention, this tug of war. If youre constantly trying to wi n that tug of war, and someone else is tugging back, thats irritating. But that means that theyre doing what youre doing, and thats probably the most annoying thing you can think of.Panio Youre also a host of a radio show. Did you find that what you learned in professional interviews helped your daily conversations?Celeste Yeah. I started this whole thing to learn how to be a better interviewer. Then I discovered that those exact same skills, the things that worked in the studio, worked just as well with my kid and my spouse and my boss and everybody else in my life. The essential components of what makes a good conversation are basically universal.Panio I dont know if you use this word, but it seems like the implication is authenticity. People can smell it if youre not being sincere. They just check out.Celeste Exactly. Kids know when youre BS-ing them. They arent subtle about it at all - theyll immediately point it out. As adults, we just get better at hiding that weve discovered someone is BS-ing us.Human beings have a BS detector. We know when somebody doesnt actually like us. We know when someones distracted and doesnt want to sit there and talk to us. Look, if you dont want to talk to somebody, just walk away. Excuse yourself and walk away.Panio I like having conversations, but as a pretty introverted guy, I certainly have those moments where Im fried and tired, and Im just like, I cant do this. How do you extricate yourself with tact? Is it enough to say, Im so sorry, Im just really tired. Do you mind if we talk later?Celeste Yeah, absolutely. I do it all the time. I have adult ADD, so Im constantly saying to people, My brain is in a million places. Im having trouble focusing. I want to hear what youre saying, and I cant right now. Give me a rain check, and Ill come back to you when my brain is functioning. I say some version of that pretty much all the time.Or my son will come and tell me about another new video game. Ill be like, Dude, I cant absorb anything youre telling me, but I will sit here and listen if thats what you need from me.Thats one of the things I try to get through in the book - just listening to somebody is an act of love. Thats a gift. We always feel like we need to prove how smart we are, or prove how much we know, and interject what we think and give advice to other people. Sometimes the best thing you can do for that person is just listen to them. You dont actually need to say anything at all. You can just listen.Panio I was really moved when you wrote about your friend. Her father passed away, and she was, of course, devastated. Then you weighed in about your experience losing your father. You thought you were empathizing and being a good friend, but she got really annoyed with you.Celeste She got angry, yeah. She said, You win. Fine.Panio Like, Your pain is worse.Celeste Exactly. For quite a while I kept thinking, Well, she didnt understand. I was just trying to be helpful. I was just trying to say, I kn ow how you feel.But she was right. I was interjecting my story of my own struggle, when it just needed to be about her. She needed me to bear witness to the kind of man her father was. Thats all she needed.If you dont know what to say, its an indication that you need to learn something.Panio I thought you had a really astute insight - you said you were uncomfortable by her feelings or what she was expressing. I think a lot of us are. If a friend comes to us, and theyre really hurt - Celeste You dont know what to say.Panio You dont want to say the wrong thing. You dont want to distract them, because that seems unfeeling. So everyone says, Ill share a moment of vulnerability for me. Ill tell them about when my parent passed away or when something hard happened to me.But if your parent just died and your friend jumps in like, Yeah, my dad died and it sucked, its like, Okay, but that doesnt do anything for me right now. Another persons pain doesnt achieve anything for your emotional st ate.Celeste Exactly, it does not help the other person at all. I felt uncomfortable and didnt know what to say, but she didnt need me to say anything. She just needed me to listen to her.Whats more, the way that our brains work is that sharing that story feels really good to us.Panio Right. When were talking about ourselves, we get a little dopamine kick.Celeste Exactly. Its activating the same pleasure center as sex and heroin and chocolate. We feel really good about it.That gives us an unreal perspective to what just actually happened. Just because we feel good about it doesnt mean the other person did.Panio Situations like those can make or break a friendship. The general advice is go talk to them and tell them how you feel, but should it be just listen or ask a few questions?Celeste Yeah. Theres a PBS documentary about this jazz musician Daryl Davis. In his off time, hes made it his hobby to talk guys into leaving the KKK. Hes a black man. Hes so successful that he almost single -handedly dismantled the KKK in Maryland. When people ask him, How on Earth do you do this? he says, I just listen to them. People just want to be heard. I dont go in there to lecture them. Im not going to tell them what they should or ought to be doing. I just listen to them.Think about that for a moment. There are all these people that we say we cant talk to, I cant talk to her, or whatever, but thats not true. Theres no such thing as somebody you cant talk to.The other thing is that conversation is almost less about what you say than about what you hear. You will not learn a single thing from anything that you say. You already know it. The only way youre going to learn is by listening to another person. In those moments of grief, if you dont know what to say, its because you dont fully understand how theyre feeling and what theyre going through, which means stop talking and listen. Ask questions if you need to. But if you dont know what to say, its an indication that you need to learn something.Panio Thats good. But how do you have conversations with people with which you aggressively disagree?This is a big topic these days, where I feel like the national discourse has almost collapsed. Everyone says you cant talk to anyone. Its all vilification and outrage. Some of it justified, I get it, but looking back, when I was a kid, you could still be friends and neighbors and have a civilized disagreement about some things. That seems to have just disappeared in one generation. Every study says we only get more and more polarized.Trending Introverts are Natural Disruptors- Heres WhyCeleste Youre totally right. Even during the Nixon administration, about a third of Americans said theyd be unhappy if someone from the other political party married into their family. Its now about 80%. By some measure, we are more polarized than we were since the Civil War.Heres the error in logic that I dont understand - what do you think youre giving somebody by listening to them? You say, This persons a racist, so I cant talk to them. What benefit do you think youre giving to them by having a conversation with them? Youre not helping them - its not like youre donating to their cause. But youre doing a lot for yourself because you can actually learn a great deal.We also know from studies of the brain that by hearing diverse opinions, youre helping yourself in ways you cant even notice. Thats what helps you grow and evolve. If you are in your ideological bubble, then youre not growing and evolving, youre just stagnating.We do get this sense from social media that we can tailor our interactions like we tailor our Twitter feed, right?Panio Right. I dont want that in my life, so Im just going to cut it out.I consider questions to be the most powerful tool you have at your disposal.Celeste Exactly. Thats a negative thing in my life, so Im not going to have anything to do with that.Well, youre not helping yourself. Youre not helping them by listening to them, your e not helping yourself by not listening to them. At this point, we have to stop only searching for comfort. Comfortable is not a productive state. Discomfort is the state in which you actually invent and create and innovate and strategize.Panio Right. Dissatisfaction and discomfort underpin all of human achievement.To your point about people being unwilling to talk, I think people often think that if theyre listening, thats a tacit approval. That if you listen, then thats a way of saying, Well, maybe theres some validity to what theyre saying, as opposed to listening itself just being a virtue, without approval built into it.Celeste I think thats one way of articulating it, but I dont think people put that much thought into it. I think they just dont want to do it.Panio I wanted to end with practical strategies that you can implement immediately. Can you give me a couple?Celeste Yeah. I consider questions to be the most powerful tool you have at your disposal. I was at the TED Summi t, and this nuclear scientist from Japan comes up to me and he says, Ive watched your TED Talk a bunch of times, and I still cant figure out how to start a conversation. I said, Well, where are you from in Japan? He goes, Im in Kyoto. I said, Ive never been to Kyoto. Is it crowded like Tokyo? He says, No. Its the place with all the cherry blossoms. I said, But do you have packed apartments, or do people have houses with yards? He starts describing it to me. Five or ten minutes on, I said, Thats how you start a conversation. You ask people questions that they know the answer to, about things they care about.If someone has a Yankees cap on, ask them questions about the Yankees. I dont know anything about the Yankees. Tell me whos great on the team. Or, Tell me why I should not hate the Yankees. Just ask them questions they know the answer to. Then it takes the pressure off of you.People love to talk about themselves. As long as youre asking them questions and allowing them the opportu nity to talk about something they care about, theyre going to feel great, and youre going to feel great because youre learning all kinds of stuff. Questions are magic.Thisarticlewas originally published onHeleo.com.