A student came to my office wanting to know if I had suggestions for what makes a good conversation, generally speaking. It was easier for me to think of communicative behaviors that make for an awkward, unpleasant, or otherwise aversive experience. Can I please give you that list? I asked, because I wanted to; it’s amusing to go on and on about what’s wrong with the world, and this seemed like a clear invitation to do so.
Sure, he agreed, but I also want your thoughts about the characteristics most good conversations share. Assumed good intentions, mutual curiosity, listening, taking turns, warmth and humor, collective interest in moving beyond gossip and the mundane, the shared capacity to thoughtfully take in, and respond to, perspectives that differ from one’s own. These, I tossed off without needing to think much about them. They’re important to me, but I wouldn’t claim they’re universally important. Those are my dos, I said. Now, about the don’ts—
Don’t interrupt? my student interrupted, with an eagerness implying he had somebody specific in mind for whom he’d designed this particular query.
I couldn’t concur. If it doesn’t repeatedly shut another speaker down—or prevent them from expressing a complete thought or finishing a story—cutting in can be friendly. It can keep the ball interestingly in play. Once in a while (say, with monologuists who are ten minutes into their impromptu solo performance and just warming up) it’s necessary. Plus, while some cultural norms interpret interruption as rude, others expect it as part of the natural music and rhythm of talk. Better to think of it as context-dependent. Yes, awareness of the frequency of one’s interruptions and their effect upon others in the conversation is important, but one need not refrain from ever interrupting. Clinical psychologist Michael Karson has written (here) and been interviewed (here) on the subject, and comes down on the side of (I’m paraphrasing) “It’s not a good idea to make don’t interrupt a rule.” I like Michael Karson’s take on things, which is one of several reasons I married him. Anyway: emotional intelligence is key—not only to interrupting appropriately, but to being in a conversational space with others and helping, rather than hindering, the free exchange of information, wit, ideas, arguments, complaints, insights, and intimacies.
My don’ts take the form of three illustrations, or maybe they’re more like descriptive allegories, I don’t know.
Hali1 is an acquaintance, a friend of friends. I’ve been around Hali many times, and each time, I’m less glad to see them. The first time we met, they seemed at first to be charming, easy to be around, and entertaining. An hour into the encounter, we were all still sitting at the table, our coffee cups long-empty and our butts sore, being entertained.
That is, three out of four of us had been relegated to the role of passive audience. Hali hadn’t relinquished the frame of the conversation once. They seemed to believe that if they stopped running things—proposing new topics every couple of minutes, asking question after question after question (not waiting for responses) and telling anecdotes—no one else would pick up the slack. Of course, the rest of us hadn’t had a breather to think of what we might like to suggest or say. Hali never backed off to allow a moment or two of thoughtful silence wherein someone other than they—the self-appointed conversational leader—might offer an observation or insight, deepen or change the subject, or just reflect upon what had already been said. Subsequent exchanges involving Hali over the years have proven to be equally obliterating and exhausting. While Hali may be smart, lively, and interesting in small doses, I’ll never know, because they’ve never allowed me to experience what a small dose might be like. I don’t hate Hali—they’re harmless—but I sure dread having to be in the same room with them.
George2, a member of the same defunct friend group (we drifted apart geographically, but had already drifted socially) is Hali’s opposite, and I wonder if they didn’t systemically co-create each other. George rarely said a thing, and it wouldn’t have occurred to him to come up with a subject to engage others. He’s so passive that, if conversational energy flags, rather than taking on any responsibility, he drifts away, his eyes glazed. He looks at his mobile phone, or stares past those present. We put up with George because he was talented and could be hilarious, but what may have been introversion or anxiety read as relational apathy. Why would I want to work as hard as I did to find ways to connect with George when he had no interest in connecting with me?
There’s no way to avoid tone-deafness in a cosmopolitan world where any given group is likely to include people from different family cultures, different economic and educational backgrounds, with different expectations, boundaries, political views, and invisible health issues. The best we can do (while still managing to be spontaneous and to express a smart, free, playful, and honest self in social settings) is to be aware that our lives probably differ in significant ways from the lives of someone else with whom we’re engaging. Karl, a relative, can’t seem to stop himself from making racist and homophobic comments, even though he knows (and appears to genuinely like and respect) the several members of our family and extended circle who are not straight or white. But that’s not exactly what I’m getting at. Rather, this:
Luz3 —a co-worker of mine in a long-ago, different life—always took up a lot of space when conversing, which was conceptually fine. Unlike Hali, she didn’t seek to control the frame with a barrage of demanding questions or long stories about herself, but Luz bragged, hyperbolized, and used superlatives about everything. Her childhood was amazing; her wife and their twin sons were exceptionally gifted; their dog the best dog in the universe. Luz also couldn’t feel ambivalent about a person or a phenomenon: she hated X, loved Y, used to love Z but now hated them, and didn’t everyone agree? The tone-deaf aspect of this conversational behavior was that it put everyone in the room in the awkward position of having to profess to admire the purported qualities of anyone/anything Luz extolled (even listeners whose dog was a piece of shit, or whose childhood had been less than nice, and even those of us who neither hated nor loved in such extremity). Also, what can one say when you’ve just explained how your job, friends, family, and life are extraordinary?
My understanding of what makes a good if not great conversation (see paragraph 3) is a not set of direct antitheses of the behaviors that can ruin a conversation (to recap: failing to allow others their own conversational rhythm; throwing out topic after topic without providing any reflective space for the topic to grow into a thoughtful exchange; interrogating others; imagining that one is the central character in the conversation, rather than a co-participant; signaling boredom without attempting to join or to propose a subject of likely interest to others; posing or showing off–especially when interlocutors may have had very different backgrounds or life experiences; demanding that others agree with one’s statements; not listening). Good conversations are more than the absence of don’ts or the presence of their opposites.
Obviously, I don’t always hit my own goals for being a good co-conversationalist. I tend to check out during lengthy episodes of small talk, even when others are working hard to make it worthwhile. I’ve never been one for shooting the breeze, not since I was a kid. My tolerance has increased with my adult understanding of the social function of chitchat, but still.
I may fail to note that a topic has not yet run its course or expired, and throw out a whole new prompt before realizing I’ve interrupted an enjoyable flow.
I’m hard of hearing, and sometimes when I miss enough words here and there, I give up and start feeling sleepy.
But, my flaws aside, there’s nothing I love more than a conversation in which everyone present is attentive, listening, sharing the space, having ideas and allowing subjects to bloom, listening even more, responding, laughing, providing and enjoying the pleasure of good company. Back and forth.
Good conversation can ask of us some degree of vulnerability, which may or may not be recognized in the moment, as such, by others and which later might make for some regret over the recollection that we set aside our usual self-monitoring to be fully in the moment, and we said this thing or that thing that we normally wouldn’t have said.
That’s the price we pay for being willing to show ourselves, and to actually connect.
I’ve enjoyed many of these—good conversations—over the past few weeks, and with those in mind, I offer this post. Wondering: what, in your experience, makes for a good conversation? A great one? Any specific examples of a time you left a conversation thinking maybe not “Wow, that’s a conversation I’ll remember for the rest of my life!” (a la My Dinner With Andre, or Before Sunrise) but just “Wow—that was fun!”
Janna L. Goodwin 