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087 - How to Have a Better Conversation

Hello there! Kevin here!!

With another episode of the Feel Good English podcast.

Thanks for listening to another episode.

The FGE podcast is the only podcast that is helping you become a more confident English speaker, and more confident in other areas of life.

Today I am going to help you become more confident in the ability to have more powerful conversations.

Last week, one of my Skype students wanted to talk about a Ted video, a Ted Talk, that she had watched, and the name of the Ted video is called “10 Ways to Have a Better Conversation” by a woman named Celeste Headlee is a professional interviewer, so she knows a lot about conversations.

And you, as an English learner, should definitely be interested in how to have more effective, inspiring conversations. And using the English that you have, if you put some tactics behind how to have effective conversations, can make it easier for you to use your English to communicate.

So I am gonna go through the 10 ways to have a better conversation, pretty quickly here, just kind of a breif summary, just trying to fit it into a 15-10 minute episode, but if you do want to go deeper, and I always suggest go to my website; find the episode and watch the TED Talk and read the transcript to the TED Talk. Also, if you want a transcript to my episodes, you can get them at

www.feelgoodenglish.com, if you become a Feel-Good member, you will get access to all transcripts – alright?

So, let’s get into the episode; “10 ways to have a better conversation” by Celeste Headlee and become awesome conversationalists!

So, I’m going to start off with one of the quotes from her talk that kind of summarizes what’s going to be discussed here. And she says, “we’ve all had really great conversations; we’ve had them before. We know what it’s like.” The kind of conversation where you walk away feeling engaged and inspired or where you feel like you’ve made a real connection or even perfectly understood. There is no reason why most of your interactions can’t be like that.

So, think about a time recently when you talk to somebody and you felt really good about the conversation. You left the conversation feeling energized, feeling enlightened, meaning you learned something new. And you also felt the other person enjoyed the conversation with you.

Can you think of a conversation like that? Maybe think of a conversation that went the opposite direction where the other person didn’t seem interested or maybe you weren’t interested and you left feeling a little awkward. Awkward; meaning feeling a little strange, a little out of place.

So, this TED Talk kind of goes into what we can do to have better conversations, to have more of these energizing, inspiring conversations. And the speaker even says, “if you choose just one of these 10 ways and you master it, you’ll already be having better conversations.” So, you don’t have to master all 10 of these. Choose one, and work on that.

So;

1. Don’t multitask! Even more than not doing multiple things that when she wants you to be very present in the moment. Paying full attention to who you’re talking to. You don’t have to show that you’re paying attention, if you are paying attention. So, if you’re talking to somebody, try to put all of your attention on that person.

We will be distracted, it happens we think of something else, we think of what we’re doing later or we get distracted by something that we see. Just come back and try to focus on the conversation itself. This by the way, I think is a great one to master. It’s not easy, but through practice and through training our brain to really focus on one thing, we can get better at it.

1. Don’t pontificate! Pontificate means, to try to prove your point. You have an opinion about something, and you keep talking about your view on that or your opinion. So, if you’re talking about politics or religion or whatever that may be, you’re often trying to really prove your point; don’t do that!

2. Use open ended questions. And this is a great trick for you. If you are learning English. Open-ended questions – meaning, asking questions that start with the words who, what, how, when; that means they can’t just answer with a yes or no, they have to think about the answer. So, great tactic for you. You want to put the attention on somebody else so you don’t have to think of what to say and what English words you’re going to say. Ask somebody how did you feel? What was it like? Where were you? Why did you feel that way? So. These kinds of questions. Almost like being a therapist.

3. Go with the flow! And this is kind of a life philosophy. Go with the flow. That means don’t try to control the conversation. Don’t already know what you’re going to talk about or how you’re going to respond before they’re done talking. How often do we do this?

You’re listening to somebody, they say something, you connect it with a story in your past or an opinion that you have, or whatever, and the rest of the time that they’re speaking all you’re doing is waiting for them to finish so you can say, “oh yeah!”, maybe they’ve already answered the question that you’re going to ask. So, make sure that you’re going with the flow of their conversation. Don’t get distracted by what you want to say is having the mindset that you’re not just waiting for them to finish so you can what you want to say. And just having the mindset that you’re not just waiting for them to finish, so you can say what you want to say as soon as they are finished speaking. Wait till they’re done, take a few seconds to think about it, and then reply. This little awkward moment of … awkward; using the word awkward again, that’s kind of the word of the day – aha? Awkward, Awkward, A-w-k-w-a-r-d … sounds like a radio advertisement. Awkward to constraints, so somebody stops speaking and then there is these awkward few seconds of – oh, oh, what do I say? He’s looking at me/ she’s looking at me. Get used to, get accustomed to, thinking for a few seconds before responding. There is no problem with that.

1. If you don’t know something, say that you don’t know something.

It’s okay to not know everything. Even though we want to try to know everything, or we want the other person to think that we know everything. Saying “oh, I’m not sure!” And I talked about this actually in another episode. Learning how to navigate in English.

You don’t have to know all of the expressions, all of the words, phrases, phrasal verbs, you’re not going to learn all of them – ever!

It’s not going to happen. So, if somebody says something, get comfortable, be confident in asking them for clarification. “Oh, I’m sorry, I don’t know that expression, I don’t know that phrase. Can you explain it to me?” People are not going to get upset if you’re not a native English speaker, if you ask for clarification. Because, they want to be understood – correct?

1. So, I do this a lot. Maybe you do too. I think a lot of people do this a lot. She says, “don’t equate your experience with others” don’t equate your experience with theirs. Don’t match what they say to something that’s happened to you. How often are you talking with somebody, they say, “oh, last week this happened to me and it’s crazy.” And then you think, oh I have a similar story. As soon as they’re done talking, I’m going to talk about my similar story. This is so common - I do this so much! Start paying attention to, see how often people do this. And I don’t think it’s terrible. However, I have noticed and I’ve been trying this out recently; trying this out, experimenting with this recently. When I make sure that the attention is on them and I don’t have to compare their story with everything that I’ve… that’s happened to me, and I don’t have to reply to their situation or what’s happened to them with something similar, the conversation flows much better and they seem to be a lot more involved in the conversation. So, keeping the attention on them, asking questions and not equating my story to their story.

2. Try not to repeat yourself. If you have a point to make, say it once.

You don’t have to keep repeating it. Say it once; if they understand cool! If not, probably not going to change their mind anyway. And if you have a bad memory, well this is a little harder, we often repeat ourselves. My father is a great repeater of things, but I think he just forgets what he’s said before, and he likes to say it again. Try not to repeat yourself too often!

1. She says, “stay out of the weeds!” Stay out of the weeds, what she means by this, weeds, so weeds is like a field with a bunch of things coming out of the ground, you kind of stuck, you’re in this area you’re not moving through quickly. When we’re trying to tell somebody something, and we talk about all of the back story behind it, the date, the weather, how you were feeling, why you were in that situation, what brought you to that situation, all of these back… all of these details behind it. And then we talk about what we’re going to say, people get bored. They don’t want to hear all of this, they want to hear your main points. Get to the point; you could say. Get to the point! Be precise! And, again, as an English learner, don’t worry about saying all of these things - this back story. Go straight direct to the point, it’ll help you speak more clearly in English, get your point across faster and have a better conversation in general. Plus, they’re probably going to forget about all these details anyway. So, leave them out. Leave out; is to exclude them. Leave these details out.

2. She thinks this is the most important one. She says, “listen!”. Listen to who you’re speaking with. What’s the opposite of listening? In this situation in the conversation, speaking! And as you paraphrase the Buddha; if your mouth is open, you’re not learning. Meaning, if you’re having a conversation, your main objective should be to listen to the other person; to learn what they have to say. You’re not going to learn much information by speaking, you’re going to learn by listening. Now, this is different than practicing speaking English. Practicing conversation skills, practicing in a foreign language is different. You’re using the words that you know to get better at speaking. I’m not talking about this. I’m talking about when you’re having a conversation with somebody, trying to learn things from each other, you’re going to be learning when they are speaking. Most of the time you will see, if you let other people speak, they will! And the last one here;

3. And she also quotes Stephen Covey; who wrote the wonderful book “7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” which by the way you can get the free course on my website. Anyway, he said “most of us don’t listen with the intent to understand we listen with the intent to reply!” We want to understand what they’re saying, we just want to reply with our knowledge to show them how smart we are. So, try not to do that. She says, “it all boils down to this one basic concept” to boil down, so to boil is like water. We boil water. If something boils down to something, that means the essence behind something. The main point behind something. It all boils down to this; be interested in other people, be interested in what you can learn from them, consider every single person that you are speaking with an expert in something and you’re trying to figure out what they are expert in. Open your world up to them. Let them come into your world and bring what they have to you. Be a listener and be comfortable in the awkward silences.

That will do it for today’s episode. I hope you learned something. I would imagine you did. We can all become better conversationalists.

Again, she recommends focusing on one of these tips trying to master that. For me, I’m trying to not equate other people’s experiences with mine. It’s a challenge, I’m always tempted to tell a story based on what story they told just to show that I’ve been through that – I guess… Shared an experience or I’ve done that too. Hey, I’ve done that too! Whatever that would be, but use this to not only become a better conversationalist but also to become a better English speaker, more effective, more precise, more exact, and more confident. Knowing that you don’t have to spend so much time saying every little thing that you can possibly think of, tying all of their stories into your stories ‘tie into’ it’s a phrasal verb; to tie into, is to connect. Connecting their stories with your stories. Get straight to the point and be a great listener!

I hope you enjoyed this episode, again if you want a transcript to this, go to www.feelenglish.com, become a member. Becoming a member gives you access to all transcripts past, present and future.

And I am going to leave you with a joke.

“So, my husband wanted to leave me because he said, “I talk too much,” but I was able to talk him out of it.”

Don’t know what that means? Didn’t get the joke, not laughing…? Go to www.feelenglish.com, and learn what it means to talk somebody out of something!

See the next episode!