Conversation - Quareness Series (64th "Lecture").
It seems obvious that a real conversation requires a balance between talking and listening, something most of us may have lost sight of and to quite an extent. Why is this?
Our everyday technology may be partly to blame. As recently written by Paul Barnwell, an American high school teacher..."I came to realize that conversational competence might be the single most overlooked skill we fail to teach. Kids spend hours each day engaging with ideas and each other through screens, but rarely do they have an opportunity to hone their interpersonal communications skills. It might sound like a funny question, but we have to ask ourselves: Is there any 21st-century skill more important than being able to sustain coherent, confident conversation?". Before/beyond such technology, however, we've not exactly been greatly encouraged to listen in our increasingly loud, garrulous and competitive societies. We've been slowly drowning in "noise"...everywhere...and it seems to be getting worse. And this is so despite our penchant for "talking" to people all the time and every day. Are we sorta deluded about this "talking"?
We're surrounded by loads of "expert" advice on how to have good useful
conversations with others e.g. look them in the eye, nod and smile to show you're paying attention, repeat back or summarise what they've said, etc., but it never seems to occur to these gurus that learning how to show you're paying attention is hardly relevant if in fact you are paying attention. How crazy is that?
More to the point here is that we've all had good conversations before. We know what they're like....where we have felt mutually engaged or inspired or understood and felt we made a real connection. Ultimately what people in real conversation are mostly interested in is us (not just I or you)...they care about what we're all like, what each thinks and what we have in common. We'd need to leave out unnecessary detail/distractions.
So how do we facilitate such "getting in the zone" in our own conversational interactions? First off we may need simply to be present...be in the moment...not thinking about other stuff (e.g. what you're going to argue/say after the speaker, or even after the conversation). And it's better to allow plenty of opportunity for response to our own opinions/statements...not to pontificate...pundits are above all predictable and this doesn't make for our learning something new from conversation. To really listen we would need to "set aside" our personal views...then the speaker may sense our acceptance and open up his/her inner mind to a greater extent...and we all learn. Like Bill Nye (American TV man - "The Science Guy") said..."everyone you will ever meet knows something that you don't".
Open-ended questions such as who, what, when ,where, why and how are good facilitators. Let the person we're asking describe their experience...what it's like...how they feel...etc. We'll likely get a more interesting response because they may have to stop and think before telling, unlike answering a closed question with a closed answer such as a simple yes or no. For our own part we'll need to let go of any thoughts that may enter our minds as the other speaks...not doing so would mean we have stopped listening.
Our conversational talk should not be cheap and it aids learning to admit if we don't know...to err on the side of caution. It's also helpful not to equate our own experience with anothers...it's never the same...all experiences are individual. We don't need to prove our own amazing joy or suffering...it's not all about me (as yer man Stephen
Hawking once admitted, he had no idea what his IQ was and identified people who brag about their IQs as losers). In addition it has to be admitted that many of us tend to repeat ourselves a lot and neither is this helpful...it's just kinda boring and condescending.
Why do we find it so hard to listen to each other? Is it because we prefer to be in control through talking and not having to hear anything we're not interested in?...
hogging the limelight so to speak...but how can we learn if our mouth is open? (= a Buddhist way of putting it). Being brief in our speech might be a help?
Could it also be that we get distracted? I heard that the average person speaks at about 225 word per minute but apparently we can listen at up to 500 words per minute, with our minds perhaps filling in those other 275 words? It takes effort and energy to actually pay attention to someone and engage in a real conversation...
otherwise we're likely to find ourselves just shouting out barely related sentences in the same space. Sadly it does seem like most of us don't listen to understand but to reply.
Perhaps it all comes down to being genuinely interested in other people...and maybe keeping our minds more open and our mouths more shut would help?
Sean.
Dean of Quareness.
March, 2016.