Many people think they have to tell an interesting story to keep a conversation going. They don’t know what to say at that moment and they become stressed. They must think I’m a bore, they think. Yet it is very easy to keep a conversation going without doing much of the talking yourself. With a few simple steps you can do this too.
Ask questions
When you want to start a conversation with someone, it is best to open with a question. How are you? Are the kids okay? How is it going at your work? How was your vacation? Or ask questions about what you have in common. How do you know Piet and Arie from? What do you think of the music here? By asking questions you invite the other person to talk and most people like to talk about themselves. If you want to ask a follow-up question, think about who, what, where, how, when and tell me more questions. Avoid asking why. By asking why, you run the risk that the other person will feel that he or she has to be held accountable.
Show interest
Try to be genuinely interested in the answers you receive to your questions. When you really listen with interest, the other person’s story provokes new questions. You can then ask this when there is silence. Good listeners are highly valued as conversation partners. It sounds very simple, listen carefully, but it is actually not that easy at all. You should not only listen to what someone is saying, but also pay attention to their body language. That often says even more than the spoken language. Listening is much more than waiting for someone to finish talking. An active listener maintains eye contact, nods and hums to indicate that he is still listening.
To summarize
What can also help is to give a small summary. So you say that… or Is it true that…? You then briefly summarize the story in your own words. By summarizing you indicate that you have listened carefully and that gives your conversation partner a pleasant feeling. At the end of your summary, raise your voice so that your summary sounds like a question. This invites the other person to continue talking and he can also contradict you without any problems if your summary is incorrect. When your summary is spot on, this is confirmation for your conversation partner. Everyone likes to talk to someone who seems to understand him or her. Moreover, summarizing prevents you from talking past each other. When you summarize and ask questions, you avoid filling in blanks yourself. This is called NIVEA: Do not fill in for someone else. Other abbreviations are used in communication training, such as:
- ANNA = Always Ask, Never (just) Assume
- OEN = Open, Honest and Curious
- THICK = Think In Qualities
- OMA = (not) Judging, (not) Giving Opinions and Advice, this is often the death knell of a conversation.
LSD, a conversation technique
Everything above just falls under a simple conversation technique called LSD. LSD stands for Listen, Summarize and Ask Questions. These three techniques form the basis for good communication skills. LSD is part of the curriculum for certain professional groups, such as social workers, mediators or journalism.