How to Have a Better Conversation

In her TED Talk, public radio reporter and host Celeste Headlee shares,

This world that we live in, this world in which every conversation has the potential to devolve into an argument, where our politicians can't speak to one another and where even the most trivial of issues have someone fighting both passionately for it and against it, it's not normal…We are more polarized, we are more divided, than we ever have been in history. We're less likely to compromise, which means we're not listening to each other. And we make decisions about where to live, who to marry and even who our friends are going to be, based on what we already believe. Again, that means we're not listening to each other. A conversation requires a balance between talking and listening, and somewhere along the way, we lost that balance…

I'm going to teach you how to interview people, and that's actually going to help you learn how to be better conversationalists. Learn to have a conversation without wasting your time, without getting bored, and, please God, without offending anybody.

Here are a few of Headlee’s tips for applying interview skills to everyday conversations:

• Don't multitask… If you want to get out of the conversation, get out of the conversation, but don't be half in it and half out of it.
• Don't pontificate...Enter every conversation assuming that you have something to learn.
• Use open-ended questions...Try asking things like, "What was that like?" or "How did that feel?"
• 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.
• Listen…It takes effort and energy to actually pay attention to someone, but if you can't do that, you're not in a conversation.

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