S3: Ep. 94:What is the default setting for your conversations? A Disruptive Conversations with Daniel Stillman.

In this conversation with Daniel, you hear from two people who are really fascinated with understanding conversations. We take a practical and philosophical journey thinking about and exploring our current thoughts on conversations.

Here are some of the things that stood out for me in this conversation.

We are designing conversations all the time.

If you have ever asked a friend to read an email, you are about to send. If you thought to yourself “how should I say this?” If you have ever done anything similar to that, you were designing a conversation. We design conversations all the time. The challenge is that we are not often intentional about designing our conversations. In this conversation, Daniel gives some great tips on how you should approach designing conversations. In his words, “We’re all designed in conversations to try and titrate and clarify our intent in hopes of achieving our goals.” You should also visit his website: The Conversation Factory to read his book and download some great material.

We have conversations all the time, yet we spend very little time thinking about them.

Daniel spends a lot of time thinking about and designing conversations. We communicate every day, yet very few of us thinking about this action we take that builds our future. One of the ways to design a conversation is to be as specific as possible.

Conversations have structure.

Spaces influence the conversations we have. This space can be physical, or it can be the space between words. All our conversations have a structure. Most of the times, we are not aware of the structure. Space is just one example of the elements that influence our conversations. In his book, Daniel outlines what he calls the Nine Elements of the Conversation Operation System. The elements are:

People
Invitation
Power
Turn-Taking
Interface
Cadence
Threading
Goals
Error and Repair.
I strongly suggest reading his book. It is both a great introduction to conversations and an excellent summary of help frameworks for designing conversations.

What are you tuning into in a conversation?

In conversation, we tune into things. Sometimes we are intentional about what we tune into. However, most of the time, we are unintentional. There is considerable value in paying attention to what you are attending to in your conversations.

Design your conversations

We set up our spaces to have conversations. The spaces in which we have conversation speak to the kinds of conversations we can have. One of the things that Daniel has helped me do is to double down on my belief that people should be designing their conversations. He helps people do it for a living. In the same way that we work on other skills, we should strive to have better conversations.

Designing the conversations starts before the conversation.

In the podcast, we talk about designing conversations within a facilitation setting. This principle, however, is one that I believe should apply to any important conversation. If you have a conversation that matters, try designing it before you enter the conversation.

There is value in silence.

One of the easiest ways to design your conversations is by leveraging silence. There is, however, a caveat, most of us respond after about two hundred milliseconds. In conversations, if we take longer than that to respond, our brains interpret that as trouble ahead. So ask permission to think for a bit. Having said that, silence can give you tremendous control in conversations. Use it wisely. Before we segue off of this point, here is something to think about. We can think at 4000 words per minute, yet we speak at 125 words per minute. What does this mean? It mainly means that you are getting only a small portion of what they are thinking when someone is speaking. Silence c