Share your goals to enter a meaningful conversation

By sharing your goals for a conversation, you signal to others on what you would like to talk about. Then they can choose to accept or reject this. If they reject, you can pivot your words to better align with them. Or talk about their topic first and then re-invite them to talk about your goal of the conversation.

There are 4 ways to do this :

• Preparing ourselves for a conversation
• Asking questions
• Noticing clues during the conversation
• Experimenting and adding items to the table

if you are about to head into a conversation, think about these:

• What are two topics you might discuss ?
• What is one thing you hope to say ?
• What is one question you will ask?

Because it gives you something to fall back on during lulls. Don’t rigidly stick to this list but use it to guide the conversation.

When trying to figure out what type of conversation to have, it helps to ask open-ended questions.

• Ask someone about their beliefs and values
• Ask someone to make a judgement
• Ask about someone’s experiences

If none of your questions are aligning, try experimenting. Get creative, tell a joke, a story or offer a solution and see which one sticks. It’s about finding and understanding which frame of mind people are in.

Once you do, it’s time to Pay attention to what people want from a conversation or you can Share your own feelings and ask about others