When in need of a conversation topic, ask a question about the other person’s life. Anything about their life. (If I can’t think of something else, I ask about weekend plans.) Listen for what part of their answer they’re most interested in. Ask followup questions about that thing. Repeat as necessary.
People like to talk about themselves. This cuts awkward silences down to nothing and makes people like you. I’ve also learned all sorts of fascinating things about my acquaintances.
Although it should be noted that while this is usually a good idea, it doesn’t work on everyone and you should notice if your conversation partner doesn’t seem very enthusiastic about talking about themselves. (Yes, I do mean myself—not a big fan of vacuously discussing what I’m up to, most of the time.)
In this situation, what would you suggest for your would-be interlocutors? Would it be acceptable for them to make clear that the conversational ball is now in your court and be fine with nonconversation meanwhile?
Realistically? They’d start asking me how my things are going, and then I’d give some vague general comments and instead ask them how their things are going and then we’d talk about their things. Not sure what to do in the symmetrical case. Maybe try to find non-personal topics to discuss (e.g. books and other fiction, politics, anything else) with the major challenge being finding out which topics both people are interested in (and don’t disagree too much on).
Is anyone actually interested in the weather? I thought it was the stereotypical thing that people turn to when they can’t think of anything interesting to talk about.
It is the sterotypical thing to talk about, but the point is not the actual weather. It is signal that they would rather be talking to you than be silent. It’s an invitation to start a conversation, since people don’t routinely come up to you and say ‘I would like to being a conversation with you—please suggest a topic’. They say ‘Raining again!’ instead.
Also, talking about a shared experience is powerful, no matter what that experience is. Compare other generic conversation topics: if you both saw the same movie lately, or both watched [$SPORTS_EVENT], then that’s a shared experience. You can’t necessarily rely on the other person having seen the latest cultural whatsit, but you can be pretty sure they’ve experienced the weather.
I’m somewhat interested in the weather—it affects my quality of life.
One problem with being asked about one’s life—when some people do it, I feel like I’m being interrogated. I’ve got a friend who makes it feel like being interviewed by someone who’s got a friendly interest, but I’m don’t even have a theory about what creates the different effects.
I’ve got some ability to do small talk. What I’d like to be able to do is bet better at making a transition to more interesting topics.
Agreed! Regardless of the reason, pressing someone who wants to disengage is a Bad Thing.
(Although I’ll note that, if done right, this technique doesn’t have to be vacuous. The key is to let the other person guide the conversation towards the things they actually do care about. This takes practice, but it’s worth it. Interested people are interesting.)
Do you have more examples of specific questions you like to ask? I’ve been trying to figure out a good way to get people to talk about the people in their lives (friends, family etc.), just cause I usually like to hear people talk about that.
Simple things I’ve asked are:
Do you have family around here?
Do you have siblings?
Do you have roommates?
But I’d like to figure out how to get people to tell me stories and descriptions of the people in their life.
EDIT: I just now realized that your comment above is a great example of the sort of follow-up questions I’m talking about. Well played.
Examples from the past week:
Started with the “how was your week” thing. The guy had been on an MIT board discussing their strategy for building MOOCs, and I got to hear a lot about business models in education and how that’s changing with technology.
Him: “I’ll be leaving early tomorrow.” Me: “Where are you going to be?” Well, he’s helping his son move, and also trying to deal with the previous landlord because apparently his grandkids damaged the walls, and there’s all sorts of drama around that...
I overheard someone talking about hockey. I know absolutely nothing about the sport, so I asked some extremely basic question, I can’t recall what. I learned a little about the structure of the game, and then a lot about how stricter enforcement of the rules in recent decades has changed the dominant playstyles.
Right now, in my IRC window, I am hearing about changes to World of Warcraft in the ~5 years since I’ve played after asking about a cryptic comment someone made about downloading a patch.
As you can see, this is at best an imperfect tool for getting a specific type of story. The core of the technique is that I don’t have anything in mind when I start, and I’m not steering towards any particular topic.
I haven’t tried to get stories like the ones you’re looking for, but I’ve found that being direct is usually a good approach. Maybe just go with “so who are the important people in your life?”
Maybe just go with “so who are the important people in your life?”
I really like that. It gives you a good sense of how they relate to people and also how probably what they value, assuming they give any indication at all of why those people are important.
When in need of a conversation topic, ask a question about the other person’s life. Anything about their life. (If I can’t think of something else, I ask about weekend plans.) Listen for what part of their answer they’re most interested in. Ask followup questions about that thing. Repeat as necessary.
People like to talk about themselves. This cuts awkward silences down to nothing and makes people like you. I’ve also learned all sorts of fascinating things about my acquaintances.
Although it should be noted that while this is usually a good idea, it doesn’t work on everyone and you should notice if your conversation partner doesn’t seem very enthusiastic about talking about themselves. (Yes, I do mean myself—not a big fan of vacuously discussing what I’m up to, most of the time.)
In this situation, what would you suggest for your would-be interlocutors? Would it be acceptable for them to make clear that the conversational ball is now in your court and be fine with nonconversation meanwhile?
Realistically? They’d start asking me how my things are going, and then I’d give some vague general comments and instead ask them how their things are going and then we’d talk about their things. Not sure what to do in the symmetrical case. Maybe try to find non-personal topics to discuss (e.g. books and other fiction, politics, anything else) with the major challenge being finding out which topics both people are interested in (and don’t disagree too much on).
The stereotypical example of that is the weather.
Is anyone actually interested in the weather? I thought it was the stereotypical thing that people turn to when they can’t think of anything interesting to talk about.
It is the sterotypical thing to talk about, but the point is not the actual weather. It is signal that they would rather be talking to you than be silent. It’s an invitation to start a conversation, since people don’t routinely come up to you and say ‘I would like to being a conversation with you—please suggest a topic’. They say ‘Raining again!’ instead.
Also, talking about a shared experience is powerful, no matter what that experience is. Compare other generic conversation topics: if you both saw the same movie lately, or both watched [$SPORTS_EVENT], then that’s a shared experience. You can’t necessarily rely on the other person having seen the latest cultural whatsit, but you can be pretty sure they’ve experienced the weather.
I’m somewhat interested in the weather—it affects my quality of life.
One problem with being asked about one’s life—when some people do it, I feel like I’m being interrogated. I’ve got a friend who makes it feel like being interviewed by someone who’s got a friendly interest, but I’m don’t even have a theory about what creates the different effects.
I’ve got some ability to do small talk. What I’d like to be able to do is bet better at making a transition to more interesting topics.
Hmmmm. Challenge accepted.
Agreed! Regardless of the reason, pressing someone who wants to disengage is a Bad Thing.
(Although I’ll note that, if done right, this technique doesn’t have to be vacuous. The key is to let the other person guide the conversation towards the things they actually do care about. This takes practice, but it’s worth it. Interested people are interesting.)
Do you have more examples of specific questions you like to ask? I’ve been trying to figure out a good way to get people to talk about the people in their lives (friends, family etc.), just cause I usually like to hear people talk about that.
Simple things I’ve asked are:
Do you have family around here?
Do you have siblings?
Do you have roommates?
But I’d like to figure out how to get people to tell me stories and descriptions of the people in their life.
EDIT: I just now realized that your comment above is a great example of the sort of follow-up questions I’m talking about. Well played.
Examples from the past week:
Started with the “how was your week” thing. The guy had been on an MIT board discussing their strategy for building MOOCs, and I got to hear a lot about business models in education and how that’s changing with technology.
Him: “I’ll be leaving early tomorrow.” Me: “Where are you going to be?” Well, he’s helping his son move, and also trying to deal with the previous landlord because apparently his grandkids damaged the walls, and there’s all sorts of drama around that...
I overheard someone talking about hockey. I know absolutely nothing about the sport, so I asked some extremely basic question, I can’t recall what. I learned a little about the structure of the game, and then a lot about how stricter enforcement of the rules in recent decades has changed the dominant playstyles.
Right now, in my IRC window, I am hearing about changes to World of Warcraft in the ~5 years since I’ve played after asking about a cryptic comment someone made about downloading a patch.
As you can see, this is at best an imperfect tool for getting a specific type of story. The core of the technique is that I don’t have anything in mind when I start, and I’m not steering towards any particular topic.
I haven’t tried to get stories like the ones you’re looking for, but I’ve found that being direct is usually a good approach. Maybe just go with “so who are the important people in your life?”
I really like that. It gives you a good sense of how they relate to people and also how probably what they value, assuming they give any indication at all of why those people are important.
Thanks! :)