The Art of conversations III
Stage 1: Small talk is where it starts, so listen carefully.
There you are, I see you from across the room. You’ve just begun talking to someone you’re interested in. You’d like it to flow without interruption, but with spaces, relaxed, yet compelling. You want it to go deeper and broader, until all time stops and your surroundings vaporize, leaving only the three of you: You, the conversation and the other person. That’s what you want, and so do I, for us both.
How do we create that conversation? Packed with abundance and richness, instead of short and shallow?
How do we make it a play and a dance? How do we enjoy it, meaningfully?
Pause talking, and lets enter it in stages.
Stage 1: Small talk is where it starts, so listen carefully
Good conversations need not start from big questions. Philosophy, complexity and jargons are not a pre-condition for depth. So let’s play it simple. We like simple.
We don’t need smart-talk or any inauthentic moves; what we need is curiosity, an assumption that we’d meet with something valuable during the course of our conversation.
Imagine it like this: We’re walking over a piece of land, feeling the soil with our foot till we find that one spot to start digging and go deeper. Until then we’re just walking, doing small talk, exchanging what looks like idle news; play with it, consider it as a warm up before the real game. It’s not at all unimportant.
The spot where you start digging depends on you and your curiosity.
Stage 2: Zero in and start digging at point of interest — Ask questions.
In the initial course of small talk, you’ll loosely hit upon a topic that interests you.
Move into that, you’ve found the spot to start digging. Ask questions at that point around that topic, that links to your curiosity. Do it tastefully, without strain or force.
You dig in, because you’re interested in knowing more. Let’s take a sample from a recent one I had with a friend:
A: I’ve been working as a management consultant at ____ firm
Me: Right, what’s that like?
A: Hectic. Long hours. But I like it — you get to approach interesting problems across fields.
Me: [ Jumping at point of interest] So what does it take to be a good consultant and solve problems?
A: I think you need to be able to gather and process knowledge from all kinds of fields, and be able to pick what is relevant, you know? You need to be a good generalist, that’s what I think
Me: [Jumping deeper into point of interest] Do you think generalists know stuff that specialists don’t? Just curious.
A [Now more interested to engage and talk about her field]: Oh, I think _____ (And so on)
The point of interest has to be yours to grasp and dig, not abruptly or forcefully but gently. You’re just curious, that’s all. No need to play anything else other than that inner drive, to know, to discover. Push everything else aside.
Stage 3: Broaden your range as you dig — expand on the questions
This is the place most people stop, assuming conversations to be only useful to the extent it “benefits” them, or serves a few narrow interests. If you aim short, you don’t dig deep.
Broadening means to open your curiosity up to bigger questions. More wholistic. What does that mean?
Let’s say you’re interested in building your career, but you go further and probe a bigger question say this:
What typically makes for a good career, regardless of the industry be it art, technology etc?
What people make up that portion, and what do they have in common?Suddenly your interest is tied to a bigger field. It has expanded, since your questions are no longer about you.
And as you practice this, your interest in careers might expand to an interest in living well. What makes for a quality life in general? Are you curious about that? Now we’re at a even more wholistic question — above careers. Suddenly the range of people you can engage with has expanded, and the smallest things they say will have peculiar interest to you.
Broaden your vision and questions, and suddenly your playing field has grown, perhaps even with your own partner/spouse as well, who you mistakenly assume has nothing new to say anymore, after a decade of “familiarity” ( and after two months in lockdown).
Start now, with the people around you. No conversation is negligible; If it is, then maybe you aren’t digging enough.
The simplest hello, can lead to the biggest insights and juice and opportunities and bonds, that this art can yield.
Use it, practice it, for its own pleasure. Go dig and uncover.
