Nine non-obvious ways to have deeper conversations

AFTER all we've been through this year, wouldn't it be nice, even during a distanced holiday season, to be able to talk about this whole experience with others in a deep, satisfying way? To help, I've put together a list of non-obvious lessons for how to have better conversations, which I've learnt from people wiser than myself.

Approach with awe

CS Lewis once wrote that if you'd never met a human and suddenly encountered one, you'd be inclined to worship this creature. Every human is a miracle and is your superior in some way. The people who have great conversations walk into the room expecting to be delighted by you and make you feel the beam of their affection and respect. Lady Randolph Churchill once said that when sitting next to statesman William Gladstone she thought him the cleverest person in England, but when she sat next to Benjamin Disraeli she thought she was the cleverest person in England.

Ask elevating questions

All of us have developed a way of being that is our technique for getting through each day. But some questions compel us to see ourselves from a higher vantage: What crossroads are you at? What commitments have you made that you no longer believe in? What problem did you have but now have licked?

Ask open-ended questions

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Many of us have a horrible tendency to ask questions that imply judgment: Where did you go to school? Or we ask yes/no questions: Did you have a good day? Which basically shut off interesting answers. Better questions start with, "What was it like... " or, "Tell me about a time... " or, "How did you manage to cope while your wedding was postponed for a year?"

Make them authors, not witnesses

The important part of people's lives is not what happened to them but how they experienced what happened to them. So many of the best conversations involve going over and over an event, seeing it from wider perspectives, coating it with new layers of emotion, transforming it, so that an event that was very hard to live through is now very satisfying to remember.

Treat attention as all or nothing

Of course, we all have divided attention. In You're Not Listening, Kate Murphy writes that introverts have more divided attention than others while in conversation because there's so much busyness going on in their own heads. But in a conversation, it's best to act as if attention had an on/off switch with no dimmer. Total focus. I have a friend who listens to conversations the way congregants listen to sermons in charismatic churches - with amens, and approbations. The effect is magnetic.

Don't fear the pause

Most of us stop listening to a comment about halfway through so we can be ready with a response. In Japan, Murphy writes, businesspeople are more likely to hear the whole comment and then pause, sometimes eight seconds, before responding, which is twice as long a silence as American businesspeople conventionally tolerate.

Keep the gem statement front and centre

In the midst of many difficult conversations, there is what mediator Adar Cohen calls the gem statement. This is the comment that keeps the relationship together: "Even when we can't agree on Dad's medical care, I've never doubted your good intentions. I know you want the best for him." If you can both seize that gem statement, it may point to a solution.

Find the disagreement under the disagreement

In the Talmudic tradition, when two people disagree about something, it's because there is some deeper philosophical or moral disagreement undergirding it. Conversation then becomes a shared process of trying to dig down to the underlying disagreement and then the underlying disagreement below that. As neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett writes: "Being curious about your friend's experience is more important than being right."

The midwife model

Sometimes, people talk to solve a person's problem. The Rev Margaret Guenther wrote that a good conversationalist in these cases is like a midwife, helping the other person give birth to her own child. That means spending a lot of time listening to the other person teach herself through her narration, bringing forth her unthought thoughts, sitting with an issue as it slowly changes under the pressure of joint attention.

"To influence actions," neuroscientist Tali Sharot writes, "you need to give people a sense of control." Deeper conversations help people become explicable to each other and themselves. It's been a rough year for all that, but this Thanksgiving, the possibility of deep talk is still out there, even over Zoom. NYTIMES