The Little Known Skill Of Conversations

• While giving bad news to others, like giving feedback or firing someone, one can find it difficult to strike the right note.
• When a small sentence or even a word can be taken as a negative provocation and trigger an adverse reaction. Suddenly the conversation becomes intensely charged emotionally.
• A conversation where one resorts to profanity, manipulation, shouting to thwart the other person.

1. Be fully aware of one’s own vulnerabilities and shortcomings.
2. Anticipate any specific problem that may occur, and try to rehearse it if possible.
3. Understand that words are key that can make or break your conversation, and try to fine-tune and neutralize your phrasing.

Connect with your audience from the start by sharing a relevant story and asking for their participation.

Choose a story that is more personal than you would tell in a regular work setting. The barriers between work and life are coming down and you can use that to your advantage.

• If the group is small, ask a question from the start and turn your presentation into a conversation.
• If the audience is large, bring audience members together through polls, “raised hands” in response to yes-or-no questions, and the chatbox.

When you're faced with difficult questions, make sure you buy yourself enough time to determine how you want to respond.

Repeating of rephrasing the question could give you some extra time for thinking about how you want to answer.

Find a part of the question you are comfortable answering if answering the whole question is not an option.

This may sometimes be enough to satisfy the other person.

• Notice how often people around you say no to each other every day. Also watch how others handle these situations.
• When you feel pressured for a yes, ask for time. It will allow you to calm down and evaluate whether you really want to do it ( "I need to check my calendar; I'll get back to you"/ "I've got to think about that; I'll let you know.")
• Saying no comfortably requires you to think what your values are. When you live by clear principles, it's easier to make decisions. People are more likely to respect your responses.
• Keep telling them that you can't help them. Then stay on repeat, even if they bring new angles of reasoning.
• When you want to help but can't commit to the specifics, make a counteroffer. You can offer someone a different resource or the name of someone else who might help.

Beyond the spoken words, the tone of voice, body language, and what isn’t said also convey valuable information.

But most people overrate their listening skills. 

“The word listen contains the same letters as the word silent.”

Competency requires practice. It doesn't get easier overnight.

Playing the part doesn't mean to just fake it, even if there are some benefits to that, too. Instead, by diving in and doing the work even if you don’t feel 100% prepared, your skillset will start to improve as you get more practice.

When you’re really unsure, asking questions may be last thing you'd want to do, because it could feel like turning on a spotlight when all you want to do is go unnoticed. But masking uncertainty tends to amplify it.

In many situations, questions are an important tool: the more comfortable you get asking for clarification or help, the smoother the path is down the road.

The more prepared you are, the easier it will be to stay even tempered and not get flustered, and therefore deliver a more solid critique.

Children are extremely curious. They keep asking, "why?" and explore new things just because they want to know.

But research shows that during the schooling years, curiosity steadily declines, and as adults, we fall into fixed and convenient thought patterns.

Research around curiosity found that children at age 5 scored 98% on a creativity test. When the same children took the test at age 10, only 30% scored well on the test. By age 15, only 12% of the same children did well. Less than 2% of adults are defined as creative based on their answer to this standardised test.

Science suggests this decrease in curiosity could be caused when we feel there's no gap between what we know and what we want to know, so we just stop being curious.