This week’s post is the second in a series of thoughts on the art of healthy conversation.
If you read last week’s post, you knew this was coming. (If not, you can find it here )
Here’s a simple summary: whether we’re talking digitally or in person, healthy conversation is the art of talking WITH, not simply TO, AT, or OVER another person.
In my biased-but-correct (and humble-ish) opinion, there are two components needed in a healthy conversation before the first word is ever spoken.
First of all, we have to believe that conversation (talking WITH another person) is a worthwhile pursuit.
If I’m convinced that my take on a particular subject is the only valid position, then I’m really not interested in a conversation. All I really need is an audience and a platform.
Just be quiet and listen to me!
I’ll tell you what you need to know, what you should believe, and what you must do. There’s no reason for you to waste my time by trying to give me your perspective.
I confess that, as someone who has spent the past 35 years as a preacher/speaker/advisor/consultant, this can easily be an occupational hazard.
When I’m among my preacher friends, I often joke that we are experts at answering questions no one is asking!
Could it be that we think we know better than they what questions they should be asking?
I’m going to let you in on a dirty little secret that I’ve discovered—the more insecure the speaker is, the less they are really interested in dialogue.
Some of the most fearfully insecure people masquerade as arrogant know-it-alls.*
So, if we’re going to really lean into the pursuit of healthy conversation, we are really going to have to determine that it’s worth it.
The second necessary component we need before a word is ever spoken goes deeper than the belief that conversation as a concept is a worthwhile pursuit.
We have to believe that the people with whom we will converse have inherent value.
A person’s value in conversation is not determined by how much they agree with me.
In fact, the greatest value that they bring to the conversation may very well be the precise area in which our opinions are most divergent.
If I’m willing to believe that I don’t know everything there is to know, that I can learn something from every situation, and that every person with whom I interact has a perspective worth a respectful hearing, I open myself up to receiving more than I contribute to almost any conversation.
It is my firm belief that this approach—positioning ourselves as willing and eager learners—can launch us into healthier conversation environments before a word is ever spoken. And it can work for anyone.
As a person of faith, I also believe that every person is created in the image of God and matters to God.
The art of healthy conversation starts with how we look at people.
More next week.
Be amazing today, my friend.
Postscript from the Discover Your Amazing team
Here are a few further items that came to mind during the composition of today’s post.
*In one of his most recognized lessons, “Mere Christianity,” C. S. Lewis wrote:
“If I have not directly helped the cause of reunion, I have perhaps made it clear why we ought to be reunited. Certainly I have met with little of the fabled odium theologicum from convinced members of communions different from my own. Hostility has come more from borderline people whether within the Church of England [the denomination to which Lewis belonged] or without it: men not exactly obedient to any communion. This I find curiously consoling. It is at her centre, where her truest children dwell, that each communion is really closest to every other in spirit, if not in doctrine. And this suggests that at the centre of each there is something, or a Someone, who against all divergences of belief, all differences of temperament, all memories of mutual persecution, speaks with the same voice.”
