#sparkchamber 112524 — Making Conversation

It’s Thanksgiving in America this week, a holiday that can be challenging for many people and for many reasons. It’s sometimes hard to muster up gratitude at a table, or in a family or community at odds. Or to find any light in times that may feel dark — personally, professionally, financially, medically, politically …

There are no easy answers, but one possible way through is honest communication. In 2022, facilitation/mediation/communications specialist Loren Ekroth founded Better Conversations Week to coincide with the Thanksgiving holiday. Its goal, “to improve the quality of family discussions and interactions that take place over the holiday season, building skills that will make for more satisfying conversations and deeper connections.” Better Conversations Week “encourages everyone to be more proactive in the way they approach social situations. Plan ahead with topics of conversation, thought-provoking questions, and other ideas that will help to foster deeper connections in the room and beyond.

“One of the most important things about holding better conversations is building up the skill of listening. Be polite, ask engaging questions, engage with body language, and become a part of the story to appreciate the person who is telling it. Keep the flow going with better questions, listening to the answers, and asking more questions to get the person involved more deeply.”

In support of such authentic, meaningful interactions we recommend a wonderful resource, Making Conversation by author Fred Dust. In his practice as a designer — he is a former Senior Partner and Global Managing Director at the legendary design firm IDEO — “Fred Dust began to approach conversations differently. After years of trying to broker communication between colleagues and clients, he came to believe there had to be a way to design the art of conversation itself with intention and purpose, but still artful and playful. Making Conversation codifies what he learned and outlines the seven elements essential to successful exchanges: Commitment, Creative Listening, Clarity, Context, Constraints, Change, and Create. Taken together, these seven elements form a set of resources anyone can use to be more deliberate and purposeful in making conversations work.” All the thumbs up. Well worth the read.

We at #sparkchamber wish a happy, safe, joyful, and fulfilling Thanksgiving to all who celebrate. May you hear and be heard, understand and be understood, reach out and be met with openness, sincerity, and a shared spirit of forward progress.

1.] Where do ideas come from?

The best ideas start as conversations — Jonathan Ive, designer

2.] What is the itch you are scratching?

Tolerance is important, especially in a democracy. The ability to have honest conversations, even if you come from a different place, a difference perspective, is fundamentally important. — Theo Epstein, baseball executive

bonus:

I really do feel like the work and time we spend avoiding having difficult conversations is so much more wasteful and painful and time-consuming than actually having the difficult conversation. — Shonda Rimes, television producer and screenwriter

3.] Early bird or night owl? Tortoise or hare?

I get energy from one-on-one conversations most often, and I lose energy from group conversations most often. — Reid Hoffman, internet entrepreneur

4.] How do you know when you are done?

We do become our conversations. We really will become our associations. — Robin Sharma, motivational writer