After posting “Going beyond small ‘talk’ to change the world… one conversation at a time…“, I came upon this brilliant poster from James Henley’s blog.
I love this because it is an invitation to re-discover community through conversation.
However, as I pointed out in “Going beyond small ‘talk”, how we talk is crucially important. In order to create genuine engagement and change, we have to be a bit wary of reductionist communication such as soundbites, marketing lingo, slogans, rhetoric and mission statements.
This means re-learning the art of conversation . In doing so, here are some some things to bear in mind:
(1) language is a maker and doer of things – choose collaborative, appreciative rather than adversarial language;
(2) be curious (a pre-requisite for learning);
(3) meaning is continually emerging (stop the inner child in you asking “are we there yet?”);
(4) intentionally look for, and make connections;
(5) do not be intimidated by difference, rather seek it, make something new because of it;
(6) work with the other person’s contextual logics for meaning and action;
(7) look out for, and cautiously point out unhelpful conversational patterns (eg, vicious circles).
