‘Tis the Season for Conversation!

The holiday season brings many occasions to talk with people you don’t often connect with. How skilled are you at the art of good conversation?

Whether making small talk at a party or navigating a disagreement with someone who views current issues very differently than you do, holiday gatherings offer excellent opportunities to improve your conversation.

For the month of December we will be exploring the science behind good conversations and sharing some of the principles of conversational intelligence.

Here are some great quotes to ponder in the meantime:

• Silence is one of the great arts of conversation. – Marcus Tullius Cicero
• “There is no such thing as a worthless conversation, provided you know what to listen for. And questions are the breath of life for a conversation.” – James Nathan Miller
• To get real diversity of thought, you need to find the people who genuinely hold different views and invite them into the conversation. – Adam Grant
• “Different people, in good faith, can look at the same fact and interpret it differently. But that’s where an interesting conversation begins.” –  Eric Schlosser
• A real conversation always contains an invitation. You are inviting another person to reveal herself or himself to you, to tell you who they are or what they want. – David Whyte
• “The most influential of all educational factors is the conversation in a child’s home.” –  William Temple
• The true spirit of conversation consists in building on another man’s observation, not overturning it. – Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton
• “The reason why so few people are agreeable in conversation is that each is thinking more about what he intends to say than what others are saying.” – Francois de La Rochefoucauld
• One good conversation can shift the direction of change forever. – Linda Lam
• “If you want to be a good conversationalist, be a good listener. To be interesting, be interested.” – Dale Carnegie
• Life is a conversation. Make it a good one. – Glennon Doyle Melton