“Conversation” is the “new black.” – Me.
The experts are crawling all over each other to define the next generation of powerful communication. In this age where Time Magazine celebrates the Consumer-Generated Media Revolution by turning a bunch of Nobodies into “People of the Year,” the word to track is ‘conversation.’ It’s all about the conversation. The conversation is everything. If you aren’t participating in the conversation, you’re not in the game.
My question: when did this become new?
We are by nature social creatures. We like to express our more complex thoughts, and deep down we like others to hear them and appreciate them. Our brains are even hard-wired for speech.
In the media training I do, I try to help people overcome the fear of stumbling and stuttering. Many of my seminar guests have an impossibly high standard for the “ums” and “uhs” they fear plague their speech. I’ve told them time and time again that the goal is communication, and concentrating on eliminating the pauses and stutters just gets in the way.
A few years ago, there was a scientific study on the processing of speech. Two groups of adults heard the same passage from a novel read back to them by nearly identical computerized voices. The only difference was that one of the computers was programmed to stutter and pause randomly after phrases. The group that heard the ‘stuttering’ computer actually had a higher retention and comprehension rate than the group with the perfect one. The truth runs counter to what most consider to be the conventional wisdom about what makes a ‘good speaker.’
I guess thousands of years of hearing other people speak imperfectly has conditioned our memory to sock away information (or upgrade it from short-term to long term) in those pregnant pauses and stutters. And it works. Which is why I’m a little surprised at the fawning over “the conversation” as the new paradigm for success.
Supposedly, corporations big and small will reap benefit from joining the global conversation. I’m actually a fan of the idea when implemented properly, but the quality of the conversation is a product of the attitudes, experiences, and incentives of those at play. I just don’t get the ‘new’ part. Plato beat these guys by a couple of millenia.
Plato knew he’d never get anyone to visit his cave all by their lonesome. So he resorted to very important technique: the scripted dialogue. Since it mirrors an activity we all partake in just about every day, the format is both recognizable and efficient. It also places you (with the burden of proof) in the safe position of merely answering questions, not forcing the issue. Plato uses various characters to propose concepts so he doesn’t have to:
STRANGER:My notion would be, that anything which possesses any sort of power to affect another, or to be affected by another, if only for a single moment, however trifling the cause and however slight the effect, has real existence…
Because the nature of a conversation is organic, one can excuse the main speaker if he winds up in a place where it exercises his self-interest. One who is involved in a monologue is entirely responsible for where the conversation leads, and has to first clear the hurdle of motive. Such is the success of pitchman Kevin Trudeau:
TRUDEAU: For example, obesity, weight loss . . . there are natural remedies for weight loss that the drug companies and the food industry does not want you to know about. Now think about this. Let’s assume that you owned a food company. You sell food. Okay? You want to sell more food because that’s how you make more money. Okay?
I caught a few minutes of that very infomercial the other night, and stopped to consider why I didn’t immediately turn the channel. I’m in good health, and not so obsessed with the subject to lose any sleep over missing a cure-all. It’s the strategy that sucks you in. Check out the language in his statement: “Now think about this” “Let’s assume”. “Okay?” “Okay?” It’s a collection of various verbal cues that a conversation is taking place. We know deep down that this entire infomercial has been timed to the second and rehearsed many times, but somehow we (in general) allow the look and feel of “conversation” to mislead us. Things are simply more believable when you have others with which to trade the attention.
My real fear is too many people will buy into the ‘magic’ of conversation, without separating it from the ‘magical appearance’ of conversation. If the fake thing is just as efficacious as the real thing, then why be genuine? You could choose to be genuine simply out of sense of duty, but that’s not an automatic sign of success. You could also completely fake the conversation, garnering all the benefits without so much as a thank you.
We take for granted that the conversations we overhear are real. Should we? Or do we count on our internal radar to sniff out the snake charmers before we end up with snake oil?
[tags]Ike Pigott, Occam’s RazR, Kevin Trudeau, conversation, communication, theory, Plato, sophist[/tags]
And the experts all said that based on the “conversation,” the SalesGenie Super Bowl ad was the worst.
Yet SalesGenie is pleased as punch because the ad worked, driving people their website and leading to new clients … proving once again that just because a bunch of people have opinions and an Internet link doesn’t make the conversation valuable.
The key is not just participating in the conversation. It’s figuring out who to listen to!
Filtering is always important. But you’d have to admit that giving someone the experience of “listening in” to a conversation stands a better chance than hitting them with a barrage of message points. Plato knew it, and Trudeau is exploiting it.
Three cheers for your stance that pauses and “ums” do not necessarily interfere with communication. I try to drive that point across in training sessions, too, and find many executives responsive (those who belong to Toastmasters, with that group’s incessant fixation on eliminating “ers” and “ums”, prove the most skeptical).
I read with interest the study you mention in which, “The group that heard the ’stuttering’ computer actually had a higher retention and comprehension rate than the group with the perfect one.” Would you be willing to share the cite to the original research? Sounds like something every trainer should know about.
Ed Barks
Author of The Truth About Public Speaking: The Three Keys to Great Presentations
http://www.TruthAboutPublicSpeaking.com
I’m working on that citation — it predates the modern internet, and is likely buried in an expensive .edu vault.
Thank you for bringing such nice posts. Your blog is always fascinating to read.
Doesn’t the fact that “conversation” is the current buzz word simply indicate the latest management fashion? It wasn’t that long ago that corporate story-telling was everything.
It seems to me that the “global conversation” is as much a myth as the “international community” – another c word very much in vogue. Having said that if the metaphor of conversation focuses business leaders and on listening as well as talking it may be a useful fad.
On your point about fear of pauses and stutters I agree that there are more important things for people to concentrate on as they improve their speeches and presentations. However too many umms and errs can undermine a listener’s confidence in a speaker so chronic use of fillers may have to be addressed at some stage. Of course as people improve their confidence levels umms and errs often disappear without intervention.