# Conversation Skills Essentials — Tynan.com
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Don’t Interrupt In text based messaging, interrupting doesn’t really matter. You can have two or three topics going at once and jump back and forth between them. It may not be ideal, but it’s not rude and it doesn’t kill the conversation. Too many people take this habit into real life conversation, where it has disastrous effects.
Good listeners let you finish! 202212311202
Accept, Don’t Seek Accept whatever reaction someone gives you, and treat it as though it were correct. If you said something hilarious and they didn’t laugh, act as if it wasn’t funny. Either it wasn’t, or they didn’t pick up on it, but in either case trying to get them to laugh will make them feel uncomfortable.
This sort of behavior puts a huge burden on the listener because it makes them responsible for your emotional state. Their options are to deny you the emotional state you want, or to give it to you by lying. This is exhausting and will cause people to limit the amount of social time they spend with you.
This sort of behavior puts a huge burden on the listener because it makes them responsible for your emotional state. Their options are to deny you the emotional state you want, or to give it to you by lying. This is exhausting and will cause people to limit the amount of social time they spend with you.
I think I’m pretty good at avoiding this. I try to not put listeners in situations where they have to give me a specific response, otherwise I’ll be negatively affected.
In general the best thing to do is to tell the quickest version of your story, and leave out any tangents or details. This puts the other person in the driver’s seat and lets them ask about the things that most interest them. They are also motivated to ask questions because they can see that I will not bog them down with uninteresting details.
Very #insights-ful storytelling tip
You don’t have to ask questions every single time someone says something, but it’s probably correct about 50% of the time. Err on the side of asking more questions. Factual questions are good, but questions that deepen the conversation are even better. “What were you thinking when she said that?” “Was that as hard as it sounds?” “How did you learn how to do that?” “What made you decide to go that route?”
People love to teach and persuade others. When someone has taught you something or changed your mind on something, let them know. Say things like:
“Wow, I would have never thought to do that, but that’s a great idea.”
“Ok, maybe you’re right. I hadn’t thought about that before.”
“You know, I used to really think X, but you’ve convinced me Y”
I have a friend who has somewhat extreme political views, but he will always say things like, “I believe X, but I bet you believe Y and you always have interesting takes, so I’d love to hear your thoughts”. It’s a great way to disagree in a positive and constructive way, and I always enjoy conversations with him. In our conversations we also usually both concede points, as described in the previous tip, which makes the conversations even more engaging.
“Nice” “Cool” “Ok”
If you get a lot of single word answers, you are not keeping the other person interested. They are trying to prevent you from saying more, either because you habitually talk too much or because the topic isn’t interesting to them.
Real depth doesn’t happen unless both parties are sharing, so you must be willing to be vulnerable and share things about yourself, and must also have the awareness to ask questions to induce the other person to do the same.