Chapter 6 Good Talks

Now we're really getting into it. So far, we've been exploring how to pay attention to a person, how to accompany a person, and what a person is. Now we're going to get into what it's like to really engage, to probe the deep recesses of another person's mind. This is one of the most crucial and difficult things a person can do. If you succeed at this task, you'll be able to understand the people around you, and if you fail, you will constantly misread them and make them feel misread. So where can you go to perform this grand, portentous, and life-altering endeavor?

Well, a park bench is nice.

The epic activity I'm describing is called…having a conversation. If a person is a point of view, then to know them well you have to ask them how they see things. And it doesn't work to try to imagine what's going on in their head. You have to ask them. You have to have a conversation.

The subtitle of this book is "The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen." I chose that specifically because I wanted you to immediately get what I was writing about. But it's not quite accurate, if I'm being honest. If what we're doing here is studying how to really get to know another person, it should probably be "The Art of Hearing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Heard." Because getting to know someone else is usually more about talking and listening than about seeing.

Being a mediocre conversationalist is easy. Being a good conversationalist is hard. As I've tried to understand how to become a better conversationalist, I've found that I've had to overcome weird ideas about what a good conversationalist is like. A lot of people think a good conversationalist is someone who can tell funny stories. That's a raconteur, but it's not a conversationalist. A lot of people think a good conversationalist is someone who can offer piercing insights on a range of topics. That's a lecturer, but not a conversationalist. A good conversationalist is a master of fostering a two-way exchange. A good conversationalist is capable of leading people on a mutual expedition toward understanding.

Arthur Balfour was a British statesman renowned for, among other things, the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which announced British support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. "Unhesitatingly I should put him down as the best talker I have ever known," his friend John Buchan once observed. Balfour's particular skill was not that he was capable of uncorking brilliant monologues or spewing strings of epigrams. Instead, he created "a communal effort which quickened and elevated the whole discussion and brought out the best in other people."

  Balfour, Buchan continued,

  would take the hesitating remark of a shy man and discover in it unexpected possibilities, would probe it and expand it until its author felt he had really made some contribution to human wisdom. In the last year of the War, he permitted me to take American visitors occasionally to lunch with him in Carlton Gardens, and I remember with what admiration I watched him feel his way with the guests, seize on some chance word and make it the pivot of speculations until the speaker was not only encouraged to give his best, but that best was infinitely enlarged by his host's contribution. Such guests would leave walking on air.