I have a friend and mentor who is known as the Master of Segways. In this video, I’m excited to share how he would change the topic of conversation. Because oftentimes you might be in a conversation and it’s not… You’re not really feeling it. And you want to shift topics. And it could be at a holiday with your family talking about politics which you really would like to avoid. Or it could just be at work and you just need to steer a discussion so that it’s a more productive meeting. In this video,I’m going to share a funny way from my mentor to change the topic of conversation. I’m going to share a clever way to change the topic of conversation. I’m going to share an honest way to change the topic of conversation. Here we go.
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Alright, if this happens to be the first time that we’re meeting in cyberspace, I’m Chad and my partner and I wrote a book called Ask Powerful Questions Create Conversations That Matter. I feel like I’ve learned about 2% of what it takes to make meaningful conversations happen to navigate difficult topics. While I have 98% to learn, I’ve got some stuff that I think would be really useful for you and which is why exactly why I’ve recorded this video. Funny way, funny way to change the topic of conversation came from a good friend and mentor Brenton who I worked with at an organization called World in Conversation.
In the group, what he would do as a way of segwaying conversation, he had a formula. It was you just insert speaking of ___. You insert whatever the person was speaking about. Let’s talk about ___. Whatever he wanted to talk about. Speaking of politics, who’s hungry? I ended up being though… There’s no way that I can fully capture the magic that he did it with. It was just every single segway that he had was just created a little bit of joy. But somehow, it actually did work. Even though it was obviously abrupt and a bit crazy even in the way that he segued by saying, “Speaking of…” whatever we’re talking about, “Let’s talk about ___.” Insert something completely irrelevant that he’s changing the topic to. For some reason, it worked.I’d invite you to actually try out that formula.
Speaking of ____, let’s talk about ___. Or insert whatever it is that you want to talk about at the end. Speaking of is the key phrase to tuck into your back pocket. Because to change the topic completely out of the blue feels really jarring. But when you reference what’s currently being talked about and then offer the new topic, it doesn’t feel like such a far leap or jump. That’s the funny way. The clever way to change the topic of conversation is to follow your curiosity. Conversation is exponential. We forget that sometimes. We think because we’re talking about one particular sort of umbrella topic that that’s the only… We’re kind of stuck in that lane. Yet, in conversation, no matter what anybody’s saying about whatever topic, you are learning tons of different information, right? So, if you ask me “Hey, Chad. What’s the story of the ring on your finger?” I might tell you about how I met Kate and that entire story and development.
Now, in me telling you that, you would obviously learn the facts that I shared with you. But you’d also learn something about how I feel about Kate based on the energy that I’m talking with. You would learn a little bit about me and my way of thinking from this. Even though I’m not specifically talking about that. The clever way to change the topic of conversation is to listen for what you’re naturally curious about and ask a question rooted in that curiosity to guide the conversation that way. Because there’s plenty of data in the room to take a conversation in any direction.
When I say conversations exponential, let’s say you learned… Somebody said was talking for about a minute. Let’s say you learned 5 things. Each of those five things could be a separate question. It could be turned into a separate question and a separate path of conversation. If you want to change the topic of conversation, if 3 of the things that you learned were about that topic, don’t ask about those. Ask about the ones that were brought up in the conversation but don’t necessarily really relate. Now, this is a bit of a passive way to change the topic of conversation. You may be met with some resistance from people saying, “What do you mean like…” Like, “That’s not what we’re talking about.” They might want to pull you back into that current topic. If that’s the case, if that happens, for me, the third and probably the best way to change the topic of conversation is the honest way. The honest way to change the topic of conversation is to point out the elephant in the room and acknowledge that whatever you’re talking about right now is not working or is not productive or is not what you’d like to talk about or just state what it is or why it is you’d like to change the topic of conversation. Then do it.
State What You’d Like
State why you would like to shift the conversation by noticing the dynamic that’s currently present in the room. And then say, “Let’s talk about ___.” Now, depending on the group, depending on the context, you may want to seek permission so to say, “Hey, I feel like we’ve are talking about this a little bit in circles. We only have 30 minutes with each other. Can we table this right now and talk about ___ instead? Can we table the discussion about the game last night and talk about what we have to get done so that we can end our meeting on time?” Do you see how in that I point out the elephant in the room? I took a break from the content of the conversation. And I pointed out and accessed the process of the conversation. And then I invited the group or the person to come with me on that journey. In order to really and deeply change the topic of conversation, you’ve got to point out what’s currently happening and why that might not be working for you. Let me give you one add-on tip to the honest way to change a conversation. And that is… Sometimes if you for whatever reason you don’t feel comfortable pointing out the dynamic, pointing out the elephant in the room or saying you don’t want to talk about whatever is currently being discussed, you can state your intention really clearly for why and what you want to change the topic to. For example, let’s say we were talking about lions but we wanted to talk… I wanted to talk about zebras.
I’m using a generic example so that you can insert your own dilemma here. If you’re watching this video because you really want to figure out how to change the topic from politics to what people are going to do next week, right? You can fill in that blank. If we’re talking about lions and I want to talk about zebras, I could say, “Hey, I think we’ve talked about lions enough. I’m kind of done. Can we move on and chat about zebras?” Or you could leave the lions out of it and you could just say… If you’re in the middle of talking about lions, you could just say,”Hey, I would love right now to shift the conversation a little bit and talk about zebras instead. Is everybody okay with that?” Stating that intention might be enough. Now, if you’ve got a particularly rebellious or resistant group or a group that really likes lions and they don’t want to let go of the lions, what you might do is state your intention to talk about zebras really clearly framed a as a value to the group. To say something like, “Hey, we’ve got limited amount of time and I would love to connect more with all of you so can we talk about zebras instead? Can we make that shift?” You see you’re kind of framing the benefit of saying, “Hey, I think this would be actually more useful more productive to chat about this.”
Now, in any of these strategies that I shared, is it possible that somebody just says, “No, I’m talking about lions. I’m going to continue to talk about lions. You can’t do anything about it. I’m going to talk about lions.” Yes, that is possible and yet unlikely. Because we have a desire to fit in and belong. If there’s enough of a kind of even nonverbal consensus in the group of like, “Yes, please change the topic from lions to zebras. I’m so done with this.” It’s unlikely that somebody is going to stand alone and fight that for too long before saying, “Okay, fine.” To go along with everything. Doesn’t always happen. Your scenario is going to be specific to you. There’s no way that I can know that or could know that at the time of recording this.
But I hope that the funny way, the clever way, and the honest way to change the topic of conversation we’re really useful to you. Tons more resources. If you want a free excerpt of the book, if you liked these cards, lions and zebras, there’s links to them in the description. I exist on the planet to gently eradicate small talk and create conversations that matter which is why I spend a lot of time and investment money to create these videos. Because I think that life is too short to chat about stuff, we don’t want to chat about.