Conversation?

What constitutes a conversation? A simple enough question to answer you would think?

The Oxford English Dictionary describes a conversation as;

A talk, especially an informal one, between two or more people, in which news and ideas are exchanged.

The important part of that definition is “exchanged” and it infers one person talks whilst the other listens and both parties have equal “airtime” in being able to exchange their views, news and ideas. However, the reality is usually very different.

Do a little experiment and you’ll see what I mean. For the next couple of days observe and make a mental note of the conversations you have with others and when you can simply tot up the number of occasions whereby you may say something and the person you’re talking to either interrupts you mid sentence or automatically responds to what you’ve said with something personal about themselves or their own experience about what you’ve just shared with them. I predict it will be at least 80% (if not more) of the time. That’s not a conversation – that’s being spoken AT; there’s a huge difference.

And if it’s less than 80% then you have friends who are genuinely interested in your thoughts and opinions, not just themselves and merely waiting for their turn to talk. Keep hold of those people, and think carefully how you want to deal with the others.

A coach spends 70% of their time listening and 30% of their time asking questions and they never provide their own opinion or advice unless they’re expressly asked to, and even then will only do so rarely. So you are guaranteed to have a conversation based on your values, beliefs and opinions and not that of someone else.

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