Even a well-intentioned husband who might ask his wife while
making love, “Is it good for you, too, Honey?” knows not to ask
a colleague, “Is the conversation good for you, too?” Yet he won-
ders . . . we all do. With the following technique, set your mind
at rest. You can definitely make the conversation hot for anyone
with whom you speak.
Like my prom date, Donnie, you will
miraculously find subjects to engross your listeners.
Be a Sleuth on Their Slips of the Tongue
No matter how elusive the clue, Sherlock Holmes is confident he’ll
soon be staring right at it through his magnifying glass. Like
the unerring detective, big winners know, no matter how elusive
the clue, they’ll find the right topic. How? They become word
detectives.
I have a young friend, Nancy, who works in a nursing home.
Nancy cares deeply about the elderly but often grumbles about
how crotchety and laconic some of her patients are. She laments
she has difficulty relating to them.
Nancy told me about one especially cantankerous old woman
named Mrs. Otis, whom she could never get to open up to her.
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Copyright 2003 by Leil Lowndes. Click Here for Terms of Use.
“One day,” Nancy confided, “right after all those rainstorms we
had last week, just to make conversation, I remarked to Mrs. Otis,
‘Terrible storms we had last week, don’t you think?’ Well,” Nancy
continued, “Mrs. Otis practically jumped down my throat. She
said in a snippy voice, ‘It’s been good for the plants.’ ” I asked
Nancy how she responded to that.
“What could I say?” Nancy answered. “The woman was obvi-
ously cutting me off.”
“Did you ever think to ask Mrs. Otis if she liked plants?”
“Plants?” Nancy asked.
“Well, yes,” I suggested. “Mrs. Otis brought the subject up.”
I asked Nancy to do me a favor. “Ask her,” I begged. Nancy re-
sisted, but I persisted.
Just to quiet me down,
Nancy promised to
ask “cantankerous old Mrs. Otis” if she liked plants.
The next day, a flabbergasted Nancy called me from work.
“Leil, how did you know? Not only did Mrs. Otis love plants, but
she told me she’d been married to a gardener. Today I had a dif-
ferent problem with Mrs. Otis. I couldn’t shut her up! She went
on and on about her garden, her husband. . . .”
Top communicators know ideas don’t come out of nowhere.
If Mrs. Otis thought to bring up plants, then she must have some
relationship with them. Furthermore, by mentioning the word, it
meant subconsciously she wanted to talk about plants.
Suppose, for example, instead of responding to Nancy’s com-
ment about the rain with “It’s good for the plants,” Mrs. Otis had
said, “Because
of the rain, my dog couldn’t go out.”
Nancy could
then ask about her dog. Or suppose she grumbled, “It’s bad for my
arthritis.” Can you guess what old Mrs. Otis wants to talk about
now?
When talking with anyone, keep your ears open and, like a
good detective, listen for clues. Be on the lookout for any unusual
references: any anomaly, deviation, digression, or invocation of
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another place, time, person. Ask about it because it’s the clue to
what your conversation partner would really enjoy discussing.
If two people have something in common, when the shared
interest comes up, they jump on it naturally. For example, if some-
one mentions playing squash (bird-watching or stamp collecting)
and the listener shares that passion, he or she pipes up, “Oh, you’re
a squasher (or birder or philatelist), too!”
Here’s the trick: there’s no need to be a squasher, birder, or
philatelist to pipe up with enthusiasm. You can simply “Be a Word
Detective.” When you pick up on the reference as though it excites
you, too, it parlays you into conversation the stranger thrills to.
(The subject may put your feet to sleep, but that’s another story.)
Now that you’ve ignited stimulating conversation, let’s explore
a technique to keep it hot.
How to Resuscitate a Dying Conversation
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