Upon reading this, I immediately synthesized the following practical advice (with offline conversations in mind):
1) To be a better talker, you need to know off the top of your head what to do with a “what’s new” or similar invitation. Being prepared for likely specific inquiries (e.g. “How was your weekend” on a Monday) is also wise, keeping in mind that a certain amount of redirection is acceptable (“Not too much—I was resting after [interesting intense thing] last weekend”).
2) To be a better listener, you need to be able to ask specific questions. I, for one, would be highly interested in a list of conversation items to drill this on, since generating these on the spot has been my failure point more times than I can count. (I don’t mean trying to prepare follow-ups to everything someone might say, but rather practicing to get better at generating.)
That sounds completely right—in general having a library of short stories about yourself and your life for various conversational openings/topics is helpful.
For 2, something that has helped me is realizing that it’s okay to be greedy—except for possibly the very highest status people, who get more than enough affirmation, people often really like it if you are curious about something very specific about them, and only hold back on talking about it because they don’t want to bore you.
For me, I think this was a case of reverse typical mind fallacy (I don’t know if there’s a standard name for this) - assuming that other people couldn’t possibly be like me, because I’m weird and nerdy and like to talk an unusual amount. When I learned to be more socially adept, a lot of it involved suppressing things I wanted to talk about because there was no conversational cue indicating that it was welcome. It took a little while to realize other people must be doing this too.
This is certainly true, although I’ve seen it fall into one of two failure modes.
1) Both parties follow this strategy very conscientiously, with the result that one person asks about the other’s life, is generally interested, but receives no detailed answer because the other thinks it’s impolite to talk about themselves too much. (Of course, this lack of an answer can also just be a sign that this level of interaction is simply not desired, but that’s not what I’m talking about.)
2) People overestimate the interest you actually have in them and grow more attached to you than you’d like.
Neither of these failure modes strikes me as particularly worrisome, though. 1) is probably very, very rare, and 2) is, if it even is a failure mode, easy to fix.
2) To be a better listener, you need to be able to ask specific questions. I, for one, would be highly interested in a list of conversation items to drill this on, since generating these on the spot has been my failure point more times than I can count. (I don’t mean trying to prepare follow-ups to everything someone might say, but rather practicing to get better at generating.)
I think you are right on target.
My Dad taught me to ask about peoples’ kids, work or hobbies, because people like to tell others about them. I’ve found it to be a pretty useful tip.
This is very useful.
Upon reading this, I immediately synthesized the following practical advice (with offline conversations in mind):
1) To be a better talker, you need to know off the top of your head what to do with a “what’s new” or similar invitation. Being prepared for likely specific inquiries (e.g. “How was your weekend” on a Monday) is also wise, keeping in mind that a certain amount of redirection is acceptable (“Not too much—I was resting after [interesting intense thing] last weekend”).
2) To be a better listener, you need to be able to ask specific questions. I, for one, would be highly interested in a list of conversation items to drill this on, since generating these on the spot has been my failure point more times than I can count. (I don’t mean trying to prepare follow-ups to everything someone might say, but rather practicing to get better at generating.)
That sounds completely right—in general having a library of short stories about yourself and your life for various conversational openings/topics is helpful.
For 2, something that has helped me is realizing that it’s okay to be greedy—except for possibly the very highest status people, who get more than enough affirmation, people often really like it if you are curious about something very specific about them, and only hold back on talking about it because they don’t want to bore you.
For me, I think this was a case of reverse typical mind fallacy (I don’t know if there’s a standard name for this) - assuming that other people couldn’t possibly be like me, because I’m weird and nerdy and like to talk an unusual amount. When I learned to be more socially adept, a lot of it involved suppressing things I wanted to talk about because there was no conversational cue indicating that it was welcome. It took a little while to realize other people must be doing this too.
This is certainly true, although I’ve seen it fall into one of two failure modes.
1) Both parties follow this strategy very conscientiously, with the result that one person asks about the other’s life, is generally interested, but receives no detailed answer because the other thinks it’s impolite to talk about themselves too much. (Of course, this lack of an answer can also just be a sign that this level of interaction is simply not desired, but that’s not what I’m talking about.)
2) People overestimate the interest you actually have in them and grow more attached to you than you’d like.
Neither of these failure modes strikes me as particularly worrisome, though. 1) is probably very, very rare, and 2) is, if it even is a failure mode, easy to fix.
I think you are right on target.
My Dad taught me to ask about peoples’ kids, work or hobbies, because people like to tell others about them. I’ve found it to be a pretty useful tip.
I’d add studies to that list, and possibly hometown / homeland / travels, if you are likely to be meeting students and travelers respectively.
With respect to (2) classical rhetoric has the topics of invention.