The 7 Components of a Constructive Conversation
What’s the role of a conversation? Is it:
- Showing off your expertise?
- Making your counterpart agree with you?
- A healthy exchange of ideas?
A constructive conversation transfers ideas from one mind to another and removes all obstacles from the way. Such a conversation feels as relaxing as a Sunday afternoon in your pajamas.
NPR host Celeste Headlee’s equates it to a game of catch where you throw as much as you catch. You observe the throw (its direction, height, and speed) and adjust accordingly. Your counterpart does the same. Such conversations build trust, reduce stalemates, and move things forward.
But in modern times, holding such conversations appears daunting. In the search engine and instant messaging dominated era of immediate answers, we have no time (read patience) to let conversations unfold slowly.
In her remarkable NY Times piece, Sherry Turkle wrote that to get quicker answers, we ask simpler (and dumber) questions, even in important matters.
Texts and emails make us feel in control of our responses and time. But they place roadblocks in the path of healthy conversations and outcomes. You cannot text your way to a raise, or remove obstacles holding up a project through an email back-and-forth. Autosuggest in IM’s cannot tell you the next response during an argument.
Even the cleverest algorithms or virtual assistants don’t even come close to human beings when it comes to deep, stimulating conversations. It’s an important yet underrated skill.
It’s not that we’ve forgotten how to hold genuine conversations. The problem is graver. We’ve stopped learning how to hold a genuine conversation. Educator Paul Barnwell, in his post for The Atlantic, wrote, “[C]onversational competence is the single most overlooked skill we fail to teach. Kids spend hours each day engaging with ideas and each other through screens, but rarely do they have an opportunity to hone their interpersonal communications skills…… Is there any 21st-century skill more important than being able to sustain coherent, confident conversation?"
The good news is you can learn it. All this ability demands is mindfully following seven key components.
1. Listening
People often equate silence to listening. But many people remain silent because:
- They’re planning how they’ll respond when it’s their turn
- They’re waiting for the speaker to finish so they can return to checking Instagram
- They're distracted by stories circulating in their heads.
But listening is not hearing to respond. It’s hearing to understand.
Listening doesn't mean shutting up. It’s when you have nothing to say. — Robert Dreeke
Effective listening helps you understand the other’s perspective and underlying feelings. It helps you hear what's not said. It demands your complete presence with the speaker, and asking open-ended questions starting with “how” and “what” (and sometimes “why”).
Listen until emotions drain out of a conversation and what’s left is the real issue.
But over-listening tips the balance of a conversation too. (It’s like catch, after all.)
The ideal balance is to listen 60 percent and speak 40 percent of the time. Anything more or less makes a conversation futile (unless your counterpart wants you to hear them out).
2. Empathy
A few months ago, my friend lost his mother. His colleague responded with a message that read, “When you return to work, I’ll share how I learned to cope with my father’s loss.”
An empathic response, right? Nope. It’s the worst response after “don’t worry, everything is A—OK,” because:
- You don’t know how your counterpart feels even if you’ve been in the same boat. Different people experience the same situation differently.
- You make the situation all about you.
This not empathy. Neither is trying to highlight the silver lining behind a dark cloud. Because by doing all this, you place yourself on a pedestal higher than your counterpart.
All people who share something deep with you want to hear is, “I can’t imagine what it feels like. Is there something I can do?” Often that “something” is just listening without judgement.
In his book Never Split the Difference, Chris Voss describes empathy as “the ability to recognize the perspective of a counterpart, and the vocalization of that perspective.”
Understand your counterpart’s feelings and hear what’s behind them.
3. Labeling Emotions
Emotions play a vital role in every conversation.
Most people struggle to articulate how they feel in the moment. If we focus purely on words, we’ll end up like Sheldon Cooper. (He could get away with stuff because he’s a genius. The rest of us are not so lucky.)
But you don’t have to feel your counterpart’s emotions to understand them better. You can label them.
Labeling emotions means validating and acknowledging them. According to Voss, using rational words to describe emotions disrupts their raw intensity.
The most effective labels of emotions start with phrases like:
- It seems like… you feel I don't pay attention to you anymore.
- It sounds like… you feel disappointed because he can do better.
- It looks like… you’re worried that the team will miss its deadline.
Notice the absence of “I think” and “This is just my perspective.” The presence of “I” puts the emphasis on you, risks making them feel like you’re imposing your thoughts on them, and puts their guard up.
Your own emotions are a vital part of the conversation too. Label them too.
When someone we care about shares how things are not going well, it’s tempting to feel their pain. But that impedes our listening and negatively impacts events that follow.
People also try to balance their counterpart’s emotions with the opposite extreme. They play devil’s advocate if their counterpart is optimistic. Or act chirpy if the other feels low. My ex expected me to brighten up while I was feeling low each time she flashed a dazzling smile. Not only did it fail, it also upset her because I “didn’t care enough about her.”
People don’t behave like this to make their counterpart feel better. They do it to make themselves feel better.
Don't make it about you. It’s not your responsibility to change your counterpart’s mood or behavior (at least not so early in a conversation).
4. Summarizing
Summarizing doesn’t mean imposing your point of view on your counterpart, or parroting their words back to them. That feels patronizing.
It means describing the world the way your counterpart sees it in your words. It
An accurate summary makes your counterpart say “that’s right” instead of “you’re right.” Subtle difference in words, but a huge difference in mindset.
Think about the last time someone bothered you — a salesperson, boss, colleague, or partner. What did you say to them end the conversation? That’s right, you said “you’re right.” The signal was as loud as a siren: stop talking.
“You’re right” also means that while people agree with your views, they’ll continue to stick to their beliefs.
“That’s right” means your counterpart feels heard AND understood. These words break deadlocks, move things forward, and make it easier to achieve the goal.
If you follow points 1, 2 and 3, this is a cakewalk.
5. Brevity
News flash: over-communication is not preferred.
How did you feel when your mother repeated the same set of instructions over and over again? (My mom still does, and it makes me want to pull my hair out.)
Excessive communication ends conversations before they begin.
Fewer words create a deeper impact. They let your counterpart absorb your words and think over them.
Silence is an important part of brevity. Sometimes, silence means your counterpart is thinking. Sometimes it means they’re uncomfortable. Sometimes they want you to go on. Sometimes they’re waiting for you to shut the hell up.
Listen to this silence and its underlying meaning. Then adapt.
6. Building Mutual Ground
Cracks in a conversation appear for two reasons. One, the speaker suffers from the curse of the expert. Two, she underestimates the counterpart’s ability to understand.
The curse of the expert makes speakers ‘jargon’ize a topic and ramble about it because their knowledge of the subject is miles ahead of their counterparts.
Underestimating a counterpart’s ability to understand makes a speaker dumb down a topic so much that it puts off the listener. (Mansplaining is an example.)
Constructive conversations are held on mutual ground, where the speaker uses analogies relevant to the listener to explain how things work from a broader perspective.
7. Genuineness
A conversation is not constructive if one party has an ulterior motive, or disguises what it wants as an offer for the counterpart. People’s BS-radar has shot through the roof; they can smell a hypocrite from a mile away.
A Foster School of Business study showed that people are skeptical to accept emotional intelligence at face value. They trust people whose emotions are authentic, whose actions are in sync with their words.
Genuineness comes when you care about your counterpart and want the outcome to benefit everyone involved. It’s what makes practicing the above points possible.
Summing Up
Constructive conversations focus on more than winning an argument or putting your point across. They’re ones where both parties enjoy and feel comfortable.
Comfortable conversations build deeper relationships. In the forever-connected-but-lonely era, meaningful relationships are something we badly need.
What have your experiences been about conversations? Do leave a comment. I would love to hear from you.