Conversation cake: The 4 ingredients of interested experience
Note: This is the sixth post in the “How To Be Interesting” Series. Read the previous installment here.
You have your belief beverages. You have your main course action. Now let’s make a cake.
When I think of being interesting in general, I think of people talking to one another, engaging each other with discussion. Most people in fact are interested in being interesting because of this experience part.
Therefore, for most people, this whole series is about this post, the dessert.
Interested Experience = Interested Conversation
Interested experiences reflect on interested past action together with other people. (If you have no interested action, go back to the previous post and get some.)
If you are looking at experiences by yourself, then you can reflect on them in your mind. You can recall for example your vacation to Disney Land (if you actually went).
I’m sure there are ways for you to remember these events purely for the benefit of others. For example, since you can recall enjoying Disney Land, you can recommend your friend go also.
In general though, interested experiences involve others. How do you do that?
In conversation. In conversation, you can reflect on past action with others. So for the rest of this post, I’ll use conversation and experience interchangeably.
In this context then, this post could also be titled…
The 4 Ingredients of Interested Conversation
Questions
Listening
Stories
Humor
These are the four ingredients that I believe are essential for interested experiences, assuming the experiences are already based on the interested action and beliefs I explored in the previous two posts.
The butter: Questions
Questions are the grease in conversations. Why? Because they’re interested, they allow things to move.
Questions are the conversation starters, the initiators. I don’t remember the last time I started a conversation without a question.
If you’ve ever talked to me in person (or even through this blog), you’ll notice that I ask a lot of questions.
A normal conversation with me starts something like this:
Me: “So… how’s it going?” (first sentence = first question)
Friend: “Fine.”
Me: “Done anything amazingly interesting lately?” (general questions toward the beginning)
Friend: “Just school and work really.”
Me: “How that going? Taking any cool classes?” (As the conversation progresses, get more specific)
And this just goes on and on. I’ll ask about something and my friend will start talking about it. I’ll throw in something related to whatever my friend is talking about, but I almost always come back to questions.
The point is, questions are interested. “Interested” is almost the definition of what a question is. That’s the strategy, right, to be interested? If so, then questions are the place to start.
Still aren’t convinced?
Does God like questions? (See Genesis 3:9 or Mark 8:27)
Warning: As you’ll see, you need the other three ingredients between your questions. The questions are the butter of your conversation cake. You still need other ingredients.
If you’re just questioning, you end up with Interrogation Syndrome, where you friends clam up because they feel uncomfortable.
Everyone likes to talk about their own life, but no one wants to give themselves away. It’s a security issue. They don’t want to be blackmailed. They want enough from you to know that you’re real, that you’re not going to take their information and give it to spammers or some foreign government or worse, laugh at it.
So build some trust.
The flour: Listening
If questions are the initiative side of being interested, then listening is the responsive side.
In most conversations, listening is the primary ingredient. Everything else is added to it.
Quick tips for listening:
1) Don’t plan what you’re going to say next while you’re listening. It’s fine to plan what you’re going to say (it’s commendable actually) but not while you’re listening. Absorb what the other person is saying.
2) Think about how you’d feel in whatever situation they are describing. Become involved in their stories.
3) Ask questions for clarification. Many times, asking a person to repeat an important point will help that person reframe the point more clearly. This benefits both of you.
4) Paraphrase what was said before you reply. This forces you to understand the meaning of what is being said and not just the words.
Most of your time spent in conversation will be listening. If you find yourself talking most of the time, that’s a good indication that you’re not interested in the other person. That’s harsh, but it’s true. If that describes your conversations, go back and reframe your beliefs.
Still aren’t convinced?
Does God like listening? (See 1 Peter 3:12 or Genesis 21:17)
On the other hand, while most of conversation is listening, try to avoid making it seem that way. You don’t want your friends to feel like they have to carry the conversation. Don’t be afraid of pauses, but use the other ingredients to keep the conversation going.
The eggs: Stories
Like eggs in cake, stories give conversations their wonderful texture. Stories are where your interested action comes into play.
I took a medieval music class as a sophomore in college. I’m a musician and most of the other students in that class where musicians majoring in music so we should have all been interested in the topic. Not so. Medieval music will do that to you.
So it was my day to do a review presentation. A few minutes before I was to begin, I made up a simple story about one of the forms of music I was to discuss. The story was essentially an adaptation / variation of a Little Red Riding Hood type fable.
I began, “Once upon a time, there was a little…”
I’ve always liked stories, but that experience changed my understanding of the power of stories. Everyone in the room had been looking down as if taking notes (yeah, right). As a soon as I began with those words, the entire audience changed. Some looked up with a puzzled expression, others with a slight smile, but with only a few words the story had captured everyone’s attention.
And the story wasn’t even good. The lesson is this: stories capture attention like nothing else. Base your stories on interested action, and you can’t go wrong.
Still aren’t convinced?
Does God like using stories? (Matthew 7:24-27 or Luke 12:35-40)
Spend a little time thinking of stories to tell. Make up a fable to illustrate a point. Learn to tell stories about your action. People love hearing about this stuff.
The sugar: Humor
A worn-out bit of advice for aspiring professional speakers goes like this:
Question: “Do I really have to include humor in my presentation?”
Answer: “Only if you want to get paid.”
I’d say if your conversation cake doesn’t have humor, it’s bread. I suppose there’s nothing wrong with bread, but we’re trying to make a cake, right?
I’m not going to talk about why humor is so effective here, but think back on your own experiences. Funny people are interesting.
Don’t worry about telling jokes to be funny. That usually sounds forced or fake anyway. Instead be interested in things around you. Notice things.
Once I was with my family house shopping. We pulled into the driveway of a house that was for sale, and everyone started talking. Some of us liked the front yard or the style of the house. Some of us liked the neighborhood or location in the city.
When the conversation died down a bit, my brother made a keen observation.
“Why don’t we check the mail,” he said.
That seemed a little random. We all turned to look at the mailbox and got the joke. The post holding the mailbox was perfectly fine, but the mailbox itself had been smashed completely flat. It was just one of those odd moments… “You had to be there.”
We still talk about that mailbox now, and the humor all came from being observant of something odd.
Try it out. If you aren’t sure you’re funny, be interested. The humor will follow.
Still aren’t convinced?
Does God like using humor? (See 1 Kings 18:27 or Luke 6:42. If you’re interested, read this article by Bob Hostetler [Update 12/05/09: Link removed because the article is no longer posted.])
Mixing it all together
The questions come first and initiate the conversation, sparking interest. You then listen to the response, making sure to involve yourself. Between listening (not the other way around), you throw in your stories based on your interested action and your relevant humor based on your observations.
Viola! You’ve made yourself a conversation cake. Now eat it too.
Serving Suggestions
(1) Find someone to have a conversation with. Try asking interested questions, listening, joking, and telling stories.
(2) If there’s no one around, call someone you haven’t called in a while. Even if you have nothing to say (but you should because you have interested beliefs and action, right? If you’re that desperate for a topic, tell them about this series and what you learned from it).
(3) If there’s no one around and no one’s awake to call (if you’re on here in the middle of the night like me for example), find a forum or random blog that’s fairly current. Forums can be an excellent place to practice interest in others. Just don’t stay there. Use them as launch pad for face-to-face interaction.
Note: Be sure to read the next post or check out to entire series here.