Massive “aha” driving down the road with my brother, Ben. Realized that something really unique happens in conversation when you’re on a road trip and that is you’re fed all of this data all around you. We just drove by a Marriott and I talked about the article that I saw that people were scraping Marriott- was being scraped off a building so we was wondering, “Did Marriott go out of business?” Which I don’t know if it’s true, maybe we’ll fact check that and put a yes or no here. But then, we drove by IKEA and started talking about the sustainability of IKEA and my thought is what would happen if we were to channel all of the data, the conversational data that literally flies by at 60 miles an hour on a road trip. What if we were to channel that into our conversations even when we were stationary?
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Whether it was an elevator or a board meeting or a classroom or anything else. In this blog, I’m gonna unpack and share a few ways that I think that you can make that happen. Here we go.
If you’ve been following on the channel for any amount of time, I hope that was fun to kind of break out of the studio format. This video is totally inspired by that car trip with my brother, Ben. We’re going to unpack how to bring up topics in conversation. I’m going to label this entire video “The Road Trip Method.” And I don’t know if anybody’s come up for before, I didn’t google it before making this video but we’re going to call it The Road Trip Method and we’re going to call it The Road Trip Method because of the natural default, I think, when people are on a road trip or driving in a car to talk about what they see. All of the data that is surrounding them. Now, I’m going to break that down a little bit. Me and my co-founder, partner in crime, Will Wise, wrote a book called “Ask Powerful Questions: Create Conversations That Matter” which is a little bit to my surprise continue to just like sit on a best sellers list on Amazon. I’m gonna unpack 3 tools that we share in this book that we’re gonna say encapsulates the method.
The Road Trip Method
By the end of this blog, what’s in my brain about how to create conversations that matter and how to bring up new topics in conversation and keep a conversation filled with life and energy and curiosity as opposed to this like trailing, ending conversation with like. The attempts of avoiding that- and avoiding that and maybe even more importantly, creating conversations that are really valuable to you and to the people that you’re talking with.
Listen To The Music Behind The Words
Number 1 is listen to the music behind the words. Often when people say things, we take them at face value. But, we’re not a cop or a lawyer or anybody else. We don’t need to just hear the facts. We can hear the depth behind what somebody’s saying. Some specific ways that you can hear music behind the words because just generally you could take that idea and skip to the next section in the video. Just the mindset of listening to the music behind the words just recognizing that if somebody shows you this, what they’re actually saying is all filled in the space in between as well. It’s the unstated feelings that are happening. it’s the opinion that they’re not quite sharing but is sort of embedded, it’s the process of how the conversation is going. I work with a lot of leaders that are very like me to some extent, ADHD busy.
Walking into their office or hop on with them on Zoom and they’re clearly doing 17 other things, right. Music behind the words. They might be saying something but there I can see all of this other stuff going on there. Listening to music behind the words increases the amount of data that you get in a conversation by at least 20 percent. Sort of an arbitrary number, but thinking about road trips having, you know, constant novel data coming at you at 70 miles per hour, listening to the music behind the words increases the level of data that’s in the conversation. You’ve just got to tune into it, right. Oftentimes we find what we’re looking for and we hear what we’re listening for. If you’re just listening for the facts, you’re just going to hear the facts. If you’re just listening for that person to be annoying, that’s all you’re going to hear. But, if you listen for their strengths, their fears, their aspirations, the background, the whole story, you’re going to have a very, very different conversation.
Conversation is Exponential
Part number 2 of the road trip method is you have to believe that conversation is exponential. What I mean by that is if you ask- so, 1 of the 4 questions that often gets asked in conversation when you first meet a person like where are you from, what do you do, how are you. Well, maybe just 3. If you ask “Where are you?” and that person says- where are you? Oh my goodness, where are you from is a better way of phrasing that. So, if you ask a person, “Where are you from?” they say “Massachusetts,” right. That’s it. That is true. I am from Massachusetts, but I don’t live in Massachusetts, but I am from there. I live in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania now. And my social security number and address is just kidding! If they just share Massachusetts, right, even though they only gave you 1 word of data, you might be able to tell were they excited to show that they were from Massachusetts? Were they completely indifferent? Did they share it in a way of like. “I’m from Massachusetts”.
Was there- is there hesitation? There’s that data. There’s also just everything that you know about Massachusetts and your experiences with Massachusetts, and when I say conversation is exponential, even though they share just 1 word, the way they feel about Massachusetts, what you’re curious about Massachusetts and the prior experiences that you’ve had in Massachusetts are 3, of many probably, but just 3 potential pathways that you can continue on. If you continue on this pathway, right, there may be 3 others that come out. Then 3 others and then 3 others and then others. This is what I mean when I say, “Conversation is exponential.” The problem is when we’re in the moment and we’re wondering how to bring up new topics in conversation or how to continue a really meaningful discussion, if we get stuck at all, we get stuck and we think, “Oh, there’s nothing left to talk about.” If I’m on a date with my wife, Kate, and conversation is going, going, going and then that topic sort of just kind of fizzles or dies, we’re going to continue that dialogue in 2 very different ways if I believe that conversation is exponential versus if I think “Oh, there’s nothing left to talk about”. We’ve been married for 7 years. We’ve talked about everything under the sun that we can possibly talk about anything else. That lit- that is an extremely limiting belief that will prevent topic exploration in conversation, whereas if I say even though we’ve been talking for 30 minutes, and so I believe if someone spoke for 30 minutes, you have at least 300 different pathways of potential conversation if you’re listening to the music behind the words.
Asking Reflection Questions
Then the 3rd idea here comes directly from Ask Powerful Questions and it is this idea of asking reflective questions. You can you know just pull questions out of thin air, out of your own curiosity. Reflective questions is a little bit different. It’s where you reflect what you’ve heard somebody else say and then ask a question rooted in it. And you kind of get- you feed 2 birds with one worm when you do that because when you reflect what somebody else has said it’s like a mirror that illuminates something to them, right. Oftentimes when we speak even as I’m recording this video right now and speaking like I can’t hear myself talking and really process that and think about what I’m going to say next. When you reflect what somebody else says, it illuminates what they’re saying to them. And oftentimes it’s amazing like even if you reflect verbatim, exactly what somebody else has said, you reflect that back to them, it’s amazing how frequently someone will jump and be like, “No, no. That’s not what I mean.” And then correct and extend that conversation and get to the heart of the matter. It’s a phenomenal tool to create conversations that matter to you and to the other person. Now, a reflective question is you reflect a piece of what somebody said and then add on a question. Let’s do this kind of odd in a video format right now. We’re having an interaction, right you’re watching a video which I’ve recorded in the past and you’re seeing it live now. If I were to reflect right in this moment, I might say, “Hey, it seems like you’re watching this video. You’re getting toward the end. You must be enjoying it to some degree. I’m wondering what has really stuck out to you about this video.” Did you see it? That was a reflective question. I reflected what was happening in this moment and then I added on a question rooted in my own curiosity at the end. And jumping back to number 2 with that word “curiosity,” conversation is exponential if, if you are genuinely, naturally curious about that person, that idea etc. The cool thing is that natural, genuine curiosity is actually a choice. It’s not a gene, right. Curiosity- you weren’t just born with or without curiosity. In fact, I would argue that we’re all born with an immense amount of curiosity and if you’ve ever met a 3 to 5 year old, you know that that’s true.
We lose touch with that curiosity a little bit as time goes on. But, we still can choose to flip it on. To channel The Road Trip Method and make a road trip level quality conversation happen in a classroom, a board room, a living room, anywhere else, listen to the music behind the words. Believe that conversation is exponential and ask really great reflective questions rooted in your own curiosity.