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My friends and I had a very interesting conversation today on connecting with people. At first, we hovered around the topic of generating more conversational content, so that people would feel more comfortable with maintaining a conversation. We started to do an exercise, with the purpose of taking hooks from a person’s sentence, and using that to generate content. It went something like this:
“I went to Michigan last year for a holiday.”
The hooks here are Michigan and holiday. Using these hooks, anyone is able to smoothly drive a conversation, instead of stuttering and wondering what to say. Then we decided it was simply not enough. We were generating content on a very superficial level, which did not help if the purpose of the conversation was to build rapport. Although we could go deeper into the topic with just using hooks, it seemed like the initial thoughts to kick-start a new conversational thread were not enough. Something was missing, which I discovered later what it was. One of my friends then recommended an exercise which he learnt from a seminar.
The exercise was such that instead of using hooks – which can be great by the way – we should instead use the underlying meaning of the sentence. So it goes something like this:
”I was shopping around for a birthday present when I came across the perfect present for my nephew. It was a…”
From here, we can see that there are underlying messages that can get our listener to continue a conversation quite smoothly. Quite simply, they can be:
- Getting a loved one a gift.
- The joy of having a kid around.
- Striving to do the best.
Now, all these are possible content that we could look into. But what’s really important here, is that you have to listen to be able to get these underlying messages. This exercise actually forced us to listen, to pay attention to what was going on in the interaction, instead of into our heads when we would start second-guessing, or even wandering off elsewhere.
My friends and I did this exercise, and we went from talking about getting lost, to food, to passion, and to momentum. After the exercise, one of my friends said something really interesting:
“Did you feel the connection there? We actually went deeper with what we were talking about.”
And then I realised that we did. In many of our interactions, we are unable to get past the superficial level simply because there is a missing sense of a connection. Thus, one, if not both parties, will hold back, and simply let slip a chance to connect with someone who might prove to be really interesting otherwise. Now, there are many ways of getting into rapport with someone, but that’s another article for another day. Our purpose for now is to learn how to listen, and this is probably one of the methods out there for doing so. It is great for generating meaningful conversations as well. Enjoy 
- CY
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