The Art of Conversation - Catherine Blyth [85]
Opportunity: Dissect difficulty into segmented topics, create an agenda, identify goals, and conversation becomes a process, not combat.
Risk: Apparent condescension
TEN COMMANDMENTS FOR EMOTIONAL VENTILATION
Most conversational difficulty consists of emotion, but explaining that someone should feel differently is the rudest non-advice (trust the old English adage “Proffered service stinks”). Instead, carefully air injuries and you may simultaneously acknowledge their validity while diminishing their emotional power.
1. Explore—don’t ignore—feeling (“I see you’re upset”).
2. Acknowledge the other person must address a problem (even if you don’t think it is one).
3. Don’t react emotionally or judgmentally.
4. Let the other person talk; don’t finish sentences.
5. Only offer opinion or advice if sought.
6. Don’t agree or disagree until you must.
7. Limit interruptions to supportive statements.
8. Repeat key words, to show your grasp of issues and to reroute rambling.
9. Display listening: Face the other person square, keep eye contact, an open posture.
10. Question, summarize, and seek opinions on how to proceed.
PERSUASION
You know it is a good idea. Help them to see why.
PREPARE THE GROUND
Breaking hard news, open with a statement that announces, like a sinister puff of dust on the horizon, the character of the words to come: “I’m sorry,” “I have to tell you. . . .” Then pause. Often, the other person will complete the sentence.
How you broach a topic can affect reactions, so give it a spin. Say “You know what I’m going to say, don’t you?” Even if your news is unexpected, having agreed, your listener will probably persist in the flattering belief that he knew all along.
Opportunity: Diminish impact.
Risk: Overstretch the preamble and you’ll wind the other person up.
MAKE IT LOOK EASY
My boyfriend went to lunch with his boss, a journalist who affected the bearing of a parchment-stiff brigadier. Over coffee, lighting a cigar, the boss asked if there was anything else he wished to discuss. Not really, said my boyfriend, then he mentioned our relationship (we worked together). “Oh!” the man cried, spluttering Havana flakes. “Well, you’ve done nothing wrong, but she’ll have to go.”
According to a well-placed source, he held that officers oughtn’t to consort with foot soldiers. Nevertheless my boyfriend’s error was to present the situation as a problem: far better to offer a solution. Castiglione’s Courtier advises a sage favor-seeker:
Skillfully make easy the difficult points so that his lord will always grant it.
As for my boyfriend, he has had time to rue his mistake. Reader, I married him.
Opportunity: People are lazy.
Risk: Suspending disbelief a bridge too far . . .
PLAY DUMB
Teenager Jellyellie exhorted parents who want to talk about birds, bees, or bongs:
Start off chatty and informal—never sit your teenager down for a discussion and call them into the room, as they immediately think they’ve done something wrong and will be nervous for the rest of the conversation.
Similarly, Brendan Duddy, for decades the undercover link between the British government and the IRA, claimed that many breakthroughs took place not seated at tables, but in breaks, “over a cup of tea,” when guards were down and people relaxed.
So why let on this is a talk with a capital T? Take an oblique approach—ask for thoughts on a tangential issue. They may lead you to the point.
Overplay the faux-casual card and nobody buys it. (My father quails at “By the way”; my mother quakes at “Incidentally.”) Yet the opportune moment may be decisive, and is often unanticipated, when mind or body is otherwise occupied. Aristotle believed lessons were better learned while out walking (his pupil, Alexander the Great, was a fine advertisement). Endorphins boost mood, and in difficult situations, if you are not confined, not confronting the other