Through my work I’ve gotten to facilitate thousands of conversations with hundreds of thousands of people about all sorts of topics. In that work, I’ve learned a couple really key lessons that have helped me create more conversations that matter. In this blog, I’m going to unpack and start with sharing a story about Amanda, student in a program that I was facilitating- training that I was facilitating, at San Jose State University 2 days ago actually. I’m gonna share the relearning or “aha” that I had in relation to how do you take conversations from small talk, which very few people like, to real talk, to deeper conversation in a comfortable, natural way.
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But first, Amanda, so I’m facilitating this program and Amanda unmuted- it was virtual and Amanda unmuted and shared something about herself and I realized she only spoke for about 5 seconds. But, in that 5 seconds, I asked the rest of the group, I asked, “Amanda, are you okay being put on the spot for a minute?” I asked the rest of the group, “What did we just learn about Amanda?” Even though she only spoke for 5 seconds, we were able to come up with more than 5 things that we learned about Amanda, yet most people, in that setting, the conversation would have just fell flat, and yet in my mind, one of the most powerful tools to go from small talk to real talk or small talk to deeper conversation is to follow that curiosity, but in a very specific direction which I’ll explain in a moment. Because a big part of my job is inviting people to stretch outside of their comfort zone, I believe that every year, I need to do at least 1 big thing that stretches me outside of my own comfort zone. Last year, I was on a 10-day kayak camping retreat in the middle of the woods, no self-service for over a week in total wilderness. Paddling from site to site where we were camping and there was a lot of alone time. There was a lot of time to think and an “aha” showed up for me which is this graph that we’re gonna put up right here.
From a spectrum of small talk over here over to real talk over here, you’re watching this video because you want to be on this side of the graph. Now, to add 1 dimension to this, I would say the most powerful tool to move from one place to the other is curiosity. And so, we draw another line coming down from a level of high curiosity to a level of low curiosity. The tool that I would love for you to employ is follow your vertical curiosity. And what I mean by that is go up with your curiosity as opposed to what most of us do is horizontal curiosity shopping. So, we kind of like bounce from topic to topic to topic, as opposed to going really deep and intentional with 1 thought by listening very deeply and continuing to be curious about that element. Kind of circling down that vertical curiosity is the easiest tool that you can just choose to do to go from small talk to real talk. Now, let me be really clear, for me the definition, as far as small talk has nothing to do with the topic of conversation.
Typically when we think about small talk we think about the weather or where you’re from or what do you do. I would say that small talk has everything to do with the process and the way that you’re having the conversation. 2 meteorologists talking about the weather might not be small talk. It might be a really good conversation. We can’t eliminate or judge whether a topic is worthy of being called “deeper conversation” just by the topic of conversation. The process really is following- that makes real conversation happen, is following your genuine curiosity vertically, not horizontally and also listening. Curiosity and great questions are worthless without these 2 appendages on the side of our head that allow us to retain information, understand it and potentially spit it back because when we listen really well, we can get curious about many more things. In particular, going back to who we’ll call Amanda from San Jose State University, the piece that she shared she- asked everybody to go grab an object that had some meaning to them and she brought back this little tiny frame with a constellation in it. And she just shared, “I’m not really into zodiac signs but I’m a cancer.” And she said like maybe 1 other phrase and that was it. There was no other context.
Yet when I asked the group, “what did you learn from Amanda?” They were able to come up with 5 or more things. She’s kind into zodiac but not really, but knows enough to be dangerous. She’s a cancer, she’s a comfortable enough to share in front of the group, right. So, now we start to travel into things that she didn’t say verbatim, but we’re present in the actual group. There’s some massive value in thing in realizing that if you listen really intentionally, what you’re curious about will change because what you hear will actually fundamentally be different. I’ve unpacked this in a couple other videos about how to start conversations with new people that you can check out right here, but one of my- by far my favorite features of conversation is this idea that dialogue is exponential. Conversation and connection is exponential and here’s exactly what I mean by that.
If I learn about this plant. If I learn that it used to grow in a greenhouse 15 minutes away, if that’s all I learned about this plant. I can ask who works at that greenhouse, who started that greenhouse, what’s the story behind it, what does the owner care about. We could go on for- this video could be unnecessarily long coming up with questions about the story of just a plant. Human beings are way more complex and so, when you- when somebody speaks for 10 seconds, almost certainly you can learn at least 3 things from them. Then if you ask a question about any of these 3 things, you’ll learn 3 more things. Then you ask a question about any of those and you’ve got 3 more topics. And so, you can see how conversation is exponential and yet typically, I think this is really important because with people that we’re close to in our personal lives, but also especially colleagues in our work lives, we follow like one curiosity path a little bit. We go horizontal curiosity. We kind of like learn all the facts about somebody right here, but we never get past like 5 layers deep of curiosity. You’re watching this video because you want to go from small talk to deeper conversation, this is the way to do it. Break past that barrier because usually we go about 3 layers deep in curiosity and then we put somebody in a box and they stay in that box and our curiosity dies. You know, just before recording actually I was leading a workshop for Rutgers University and somebody asked a question about when you work with colleagues for 10 plus years you feel like you know everything about them, even though realistically you only know 2 percent of their world and yet you put them in a box. You don’t- if you work somebody for 10 years, it was probably in the 1st year that they landed in the box. It was either like, “He’s the funny guy, he’s always a jokester.” “He’s the curmudgeon who’s always cranky and has nothing positive to say in a meeting.” We put people in these boxes and that limits or puts a ceiling on our curiosity, and prevents that vertical curiosity from piercing through.
I would say to take a personal note from this when Will, my co-founder and partner, really taught me this. When my curiosity is not present with Kate, my wife, our relationship is dead. When I am not curious about who Kate is there is no progression, there’s no relationship moving forward in that sense. The coolest part though is that curiosity is a choice. It’s a choice and it’s also kind of like a muscle. The more you use it the more easy it is to use. The more curious you are, the more easy it is to be curious. There’s this like awesome cyclical effect. But you’re watching this video to go from small talk to deeper conversation and so really all you have to do is be curious 3 times today and then 3 times tomorrow, and the more days you go on being curious, following that curiosity with questions, the deeper conversations you’ll find yourself having. If you’re asking rather than random curiosities from your brain, if you’re asking about what somebody has just shared with you from what you’ve listened, the conversation will very quickly move from small talk to real talk. If you enjoyed this video, it turns out that my job is helping people create conversations that matter. Will and I wrote a book about it it’s called “Ask Powerful Questions: Create Conversations That Matter.”