Celeste Headlee: 10 ways to have a better conversation

Before if you want to have a polite conversation, normally you would follow the advice of Henry Higgins in “My Fair Lady”: Stick to the weather and your health. Pew Research did a study of 10000 American adults, and they found that people are not listening to each other. People make decisions based on what they already believed. 

A conversation requires a balance between talking and listening. Due to technology, about a third of American teenagers send more than a hundred texts a day. And almost most of them, are more likely to text their friends than they are to talk to them face to face. 

Try to talk the people both you like or you do not like. Stay away the advice, such as look the person in the eye, think of interesting topics to discuss in advance, look, nod and smile to show that you’re paying attention, repeat back what you just heard or summarise it. The speaker said that, just forget all of that, it is crap.

In this speech, she talked about 10  basic rules how to have a really great conversation. 

1) Don’t multitask. Be present, be in that moment. Don’t think anything else. 

2) Don’t pontificate. If you want to state your opinion without response or argument, write a blog. Bill Nye said:” Everyone you will ever meet knows something that you don’t."

3) Use open-ended questions. Start your questions with who, what, when, where, why or how. Avoid to put in a complicated question. 

4) Go with the flow. That means thoughts will come into your mind and you need to let them go out of your mind. 

5) If you don’t know, say that you don’t know. 

6) Don’t equate your experience with theirs. If they’re talking about having lost a family member, don’t start talking about the time you lost a family member. If they’re talking about the trouble they’re having at work, don’t tell them about how much you hate your job. 

7) Try not to repeat yourself. 

8) Stay out of the weeds. People don’t care about the years, the names, and all those details.They care about what you’re like, what you have in common. 

9) Most important one. Listen! “If your mouth is open, you’re not learning.”  People like talking. When they are talking, they are in control. The average person talks at about 225 words per minute, but we can listen at up to 500 words per minute. Our minds are filling in those other 275 words. Try to pay attention to someone, otherwise, you’re not in a conversation. 

10) Be brief:

“A good conversation is like a miniskirt; short enough to retain interest, but long enough to cover the subject"