Just wanted to share a useful template that can help you in conversations. If you find that your conversations fizzle out really fast even when you’re trying to be a listener and ask questions and all that, this might help. Here’s the template:
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* Someone makes a statement about something (can be pretty much anything).
* Think of something you’d like that person to elaborate on:
* **Facts** *(objective data. ‘what did you eat’, ‘where did you go’)*
* **Experiences** *(memories. ‘how did it taste’, ‘what did you do there’)*
* **Opinions** *(current subjective feelings. ‘what kind of meals are on top of your list?’, ‘how did that compare to your other trip?’)*
* **Speculations** *(mental frameworks, similar to opinions but more angled towards forming new opinions rather than just asking about existing ones. ‘what kind of food would you want to try next?’, ‘now that you’ve just come back from one, what would your ideal next vacation be? or does it depend a lot on the season?’)*
* To help you figure out what you’re actually curious about enough to ask, try non-competitive comparison. It’s fun to compare other people’s experiences and thoughts to your own to see where you’re similar and where you’re different.
* So if someone says ‘I visited Toronto’, you can then respond in any number of ways by merging your own experience and being curious.
* You were also recently in Toronto: ‘Oh nice! I was just there a few weeks ago, great minds think alike. What did you do there?’
* You were in Toronto a while ago: ‘Oh nice! I haven’t been there since before Covid, do you know if it’s changed much the last few years?’
* You have never been to Toronto: ‘Oh nice! I’ve never been there, how does it compare to Waterloo?’
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The easiest way to have a smooth conversation is to genuinely be interested in *specifically* the person you’re having a conversation with. That is to say, you’re not just “using” the closest stranger to yourself to make friends with anyone, but rather you’ve selected one particular person that you want to get to know better than others. This will foster a genuine curiosity to know more about someone’s 1) facts, 2) experiences, 3) opinions, and 4) speculations.
If you can’t be genuinely interested in the person you’re having a conversation with, it’s a bit harder to form a bond. But at the least, you can try to be interested in how you compare to the person you’re having a conversation with (laterally; you’re not looking to say if they’re better or worse than you, but rather where and what your similarities are).
Hope this helps!