Learning the Art of Conversation

Whatever the reason, people no longer know how to communicate. They might have mastered the art of texting but they do not know how to engage in conversation via the spoken word.

As it happens, behavioral economists are at the ready to teach them how to do it. Sue Shellenbarger does not mention that the techniques espoused by the experts she quotes come down to us from those master manipulators, but they do.

Shellenbarger reports in the Wall Street Journal on coaches who try to show people how best to engage in conversations. She opens with this example:

If someone says, “I just got back from vacation,” three in four people give a dead-end reply like, “Boy, do I need one of those.” A more inviting question, such as, “What was your favorite day like?” can keep the conversation from dying on the vine, according to research by Contacts Count,​a Newtown, Pa., consulting and training firm that advises employers on networking.

True enough, the second question was more inviting than the first. But it was also more intrusive. If you do not know someone you do better not to be overly intrusive. It's rude.

The consultants ignore the larger issues: the gender of the conversationalists, the circumstances that are drawing them together, their relative marital statuses and their positions on the corporate hierarchy. Without knowing these salient data points, we do not really know what is going on in the conversation. A man accosting a woman at a bar with an intrusive question is not the same as a man meeting another man at a corporate function and asking an intrusive question.

We want to know whether the two people are getting to know each other in order to do business or are trying to seduce each other. Dare I say, that it is best not to play off the ambiguity that might pertain when a single man starts a conversation with an attractive single woman, who is also his colleague, his subordinate or his boss. Each different situation changes the dynamics.

If you open a conversation with a jarring, intrusive question you are in the world of seduction. Or, the world of the pick-up artist. You might not think so, but you are. If you are doing this at a business function, you are acting inappropriately.

Much is wrong with the example Shellenbarger offers.

First, when you meet someone you should not announce that you just got back from vacation. If I do not know you why would I care whether or not you have just gotten back from vacation?

A better open gambit raises a topic that is common to the two of you—the weather, the event, the markets, the ball game, the company you both work for. Anyone who opens a conversation with a stranger by announcing that he has just gotten back from vacation is not interested in connecting. He is interested in seducing and manipulating.

Second, if someone does as the consultants suggest and opens the conversation by announcing that he has just gotten back from vacation, the correct response is: where did you go? How did you like it? I've always wanted to go there? Ask about the vacation and draw the person out.

In order to maintain reciprocity you should then share some information about your last vacation or about your forthcoming vacation. In conversations, reciprocity should be the order of the day.

I do not believe that three out of four people are so brain dead that they would respond: “Boy, do I need one of those.” Yet, if you are dealing with someone who is so gauche that he announces that he has just returned from vacation, a throw away remark about how much you need a vacation is dismissive.

Third, no one really asks, upon meeting someone for the first time, what his favorite vacation day was? It’s intrusive and prying. It fails to respect social boundaries and assumes that the person is an intimate friend. Even if you are close friends what would happen if his favorite day was he and his wife spent the day in bed with someone they picked up at the bar?

Since her example sounds like a caricature Shellenbarger offers us another example from another corporate trainer:

Vanessa Van Edwards had been attending networking events for several years during and after college when she realized she was having the same conversation again and again. “It went like this: So what do you do? Yeah. Where are you from. Yeah, yeah, been there. Do you live around here? Well, I’d better go get another glass of wine,” says Ms. Van Edwards, a Portland, Ore., corporate trainer and author of “Captivate,” a new book on social skills.

She started trying conversation-openers that jarred people a bit, in a pleasant way: “Have you been working on anything exciting recently?” Or, “Any exciting plans this summer?”

“If I’m feeling very brave, I ask, ‘What personal passion projects are you working on?’ ” Ms. Van Edwards says. She began making contacts who followed up more often.

Again, we do not know whether Van Edwards is addressing men or women or neutered beings. Perhaps people respond to her new opening gambits because it feels like a seduction. And because she is good looking.

Why did it take Van Edwards several years to figure out that she was not connecting with people at corporate functions? Perhaps, her new contacts followed up more often, but we do not know whether the contacts were male or female, and we do not know what the stakes of the conversation were, so we cannot draw any proper conclusions. Connecting with people and charming them are two different things. Being captivating is often being seductive.

At a time, when women complain about sexual harassment in the workplace it might be a good idea to avoid conversational gambits that feel like seduction. Just saying.

And, of course, asking probing questions might make you a busybody:

Such openers also risk falling flat. Ms. Van Edwards recently asked a stranger she met on a business trip what he was working on that was exciting. The man replied that he hated his job and was going through a divorce. She salvaged the exchange by thanking him for being honest, empathizing and drawing him into brainstorming about what’s it’s like being stuck in a rut and how to escape it.

Was she salvaging something or was she retreating into seduction mode? She seems more to be offering therapy than engaging with another person. One does not know what she means about meeting a stranger on a business trip. Did she meet him at a bar or was she in a meeting with him? If she met him at a bar, her approach seems more to be in the realm of the pick-up artist than the corporate networker. A man who is getting over a divorce who gets hit on by an attractive woman at a bar or in a meeting will probably not be thinking of making a business deal.

Most people know better than to accost strangers with intrusive and invasive questions—unless they are trying to seduce them. And if they are not really trying to seduce them, adopting a seducer’s approach is misleading and dishonest.

Shellenbarger continues:

Only one in four people sees value in asking probing questions of strangers, based on a Contacts Count survey of 1,000 people. Doing so can be risky, says Lynne Waymon, the firm’s CEO and co-author of a book on networking. “I’m demanding more of you when I ask thought-provoking questions. I’m making an assumption that you’re in this conversation to make something of it—that you’re not going to see somebody across the room and say, ‘Oh, I need to go talk to Susan or Bob,’” she says. “But the connections you make are going to be much more dramatic and long-lasting.”

Thought-provoking questions are rude and intrusive. They show a failure to respect boundaries. If a woman adopts this posture and is not trying to seduce the stranger, then she has been lying to him and to herself.

In a last example Shellenbarger quotes a woman who is more introverted, but who has learned a question to ask a stranger—which sounds like a pick-up line.

Learning to start deep conversations can be a relief to the people who dread networking the most. Pamela J. Bradley says she’s an introvert. Meeting strangers used to touch off an anxious voice in her head. The voice would scream, “I have a terrible time networking, or I have a terrible time remembering names,” says Ms. Bradley, human-resources manager for Keiter, a Glen Allen, Va., accounting and consulting firm. Asking probing questions turns down that voice and puts the spotlight on the other person, she says. Among her favorites is, “What’s keeping you awake at night?” because it encourages clients to explain their most worrisome issues.

If a female stranger asks a male what is keeping him up at night, she is playing a seduction game.  If she is talking to a client who is not a stranger and is offering to help him she would do better to ask how she can help his business.

Asking what is keeping someone up at night draws a picture of the person, alone in bed, tossing around, unable to get to sleep. It’s not a flattering picture, unless she wants to become part of it.

No man would ever ask another man what is keeping him up at night. If he did he would be told that it’s none of his business.