Learn to control your own emotions. This may take many years of practice. Meditation, martial arts, or many kinds of sports and skills can be good for this. You will think better if you keep calm.
Listen very carefully to others. Maybe you will learn something, maybe they just confirm your initial impression. Often people speak to express their mood, not to convey information. Also, when people talk very passionately about their opinions of other people, they are often speaking indirectly about their feelings towards themselves.
Never interrupt. Never contradict, Never insult. These are low-value tactics in a verbal conflict. By not using them, you make it much harder for other people to use on you. If other people interrupt, contradict, or insult you, ignore it. By 'contradict' I mean don't say 'No, that's wrong...' Just say the correct thing and stop. So if someone says 'wheels are square, everybody knows that,' just say 'wheels are round,' and stop talking.
In general, it's a good idea to say as little as possible until the other person runs out of things to say, especially if they're angry.
Repeat what other people have told you. Ask simple questions, ideally with yes/no or very definite answers. It will be much easier to tell if the other person is lying. Also, ask questions that you already know the answer to, in order to get the other person to follow the direction you want in conversation. this is a technique trial lawyers use a lot.
When you use these techniques in an argument, it's like you step out of the way if someone tries to hit you. The other person swings his fist - you move aside. You can lead the person where you want to go by the way you move. They waste their energy expressing anger or saying foolish things. When you speak, you are very careful to say only things you are sure about.
Avoid trying to jump ahead of the conversation to guess what someone really means or what their secret motivation is or anything like that. Often such guesses are wrong, and in any case it often doesn't matter.
Smart people are never afraid to say 'I don't know' or 'I don't understand, please explain' or 'I'm confused about ______.' If you make a habit to be honest about this instead of pretending to understand something you don't, you'll find it's hard to for other people to lie to you.
What the parent comment said, plus there's a technique from Improv sometimes called "Agree and amplify", and when both conversation partners are good at it there is fun to be had:
If someone asks you if you enjoy looking at elephants in tutus and you reply with “no that’s stupid”. It really hinders the conversation and stops whatever momentum you have. If you don’t think it’s a really strong topic, try to accept what the person says and try to improve it. You can improve it by saying, “what about ninja’s in tutus? It would be a lot funnier to see them run around with pink tutus and trying to be stealth, don’t you think?
http://www.reddit.com/r/seduction/comments/q19tp/improv_clas...
I don't think it's the best example, but the author isn't James Bond so I don't expect it to be.
Can't recommend improv classes highly enough. I only did the intro / 101 course, but it was great, and not just for learning to actually get on stage and "do" improv. A lot of the skills and drills you do in improv can help with general communication in any setting.
A drill we did, related to @meric's comment above, was called the "yes and" drill. It goes like this: A says something, and B follows on by going "Yes, $WHAT_A_SAID AND, $WHATEVER_B_HAS_TO_SAY".
Example:
A. Elephants in pink tutus are awsome.
B. Yes, elephants in pink tutus ARE awsome, and what's more, ninjas in pink tutus are also awesome when they are trying to be stealthy.
A. Yes, ninjas in pink tutus are awesome when they're trying to be stealthy, AND it's hilarious when they get caught anyway.
B. Yes, it's hilarious when ninjas in pink tutus get caught, AND it's very embarrassing when they have to explain where they got the pink tutus...
and so on and so on... these exchanges can get REALLY silly (hence the comic effect) but the idea of agreeing and then adding on to what the other person said can be used in many contexts to help keep things flowing.
An extension of that drill was to go "Yes, AND" and then do one of three things:
1. Add something new to the scene (see above)
2. Explain how the "thing" makes you feel.
"Yes, elephants in pink tutus are awesome, and I get really excited when I see them coming down the street"
3. Actually, I forget what the third thing was. But take an improv class or read a book on improv, or Google it. :-)
I'm not sure this kind of yes-anding makes the speaker appear smart.
Isn't the purpose of yes-and to help ego to undercut alter's frame-setting through one-upmanhip? And isn't the purpose of the comic effect to divert the audience's attention away from alter's point, because because for some reason ego don't want that point to be discussed further?
To be sure, all of this can be effective in a jocular, conversational social setting, especially when the audience is not yet primed to detecting yes-anding, but I doubt it imparts the impression of intellectual superiority upon the listeners.
Yeah, it probably is particularly effective in a more jocular setting... but let me add that I'm not proposing to, in a non improv show setting, literally "yes and" everything somebody says. I'm just saying that the general principle of "agree, then add" is a useful tool in conversation, to avoid conflict, which can derail the conversation.
It isn't necessarily so much about "sounding smart" (which, in my mind, is not the real point anyway) but rather about controlling and guiding the conversation in such a way as to accomplish your end (whatever that may be).
If you go and take improv training, you have to be prepared to generalize from it and extract the useful principles, before applying them in other settings. Otherwise, you might wind up telling your boss that the reason the site is down is because a stealthy group of ninjas in pink tutus, riding elephants, stole the Postgres database!
Brilliant response above.
I consider talking and socializing key skills in life, it's a shame schools don't have classes specifically for these things.
In addition to the parent comment, there are many books to supplement the development of one's communication skills. Some that I've read and found useful include The Definitive Book of Body Language and How To Win Friends And Influence People.
There are some contradictions here:
> Repeat what other people have told you. Ask simple questions, ideally with yes/no or very definite answers.
and
> Smart people are never afraid to say 'I don't know' or 'I don't understand, please explain' or 'I'm confused about ______.'
My general advice is that people like talking, and 'being able to hold a conversation' often just means 'make the other person feel good by keeping them talking.' If I've been talking for more than a minute I'll try to dump the focus on someone else.
You're right, that bit wasn't very clear. I didn't mean that you should just repeat random interesting things that you have heard because they sounded good!
By 'repeat what other people have told you,' I meant to repeat briefly what you have just heard from the person you are conversing with, especially if you're disagreeing over something. this to make sure you've understood what they were telling you, and to show them that you were paying attention. One of the most frustrating things is to explain something and realize the other person hasn't really been listening, so I'll go to great lengths to make sure the other person knows they've been heard and got all their points across before I start trying to make any of my own.
Obviously it depends on context. If you're both talking about some objective factual matter you can throw facts back and forth and if you can't agree you can go to the book/google/whatever. But where subjective matters are concerned people can have honestly different interpretations of the same circumstances.
Could you expand on "If other people interrupt, contradict, or insult you, ignore it."
Do you mean if you're in mid-sentence and someone interrupts you that you should continue talking as if they had not interrupted? I have someone I have to deal with who does this a lot, and I really struggle with it. I have pointed out the interruptions, and need to do so again, but interested to hear your point of view (as I really liked your points above)
If they do it repeatedly and it's making it impossible for you to communicate, a simple "excuse me" will do. If they absolutely will not stop interrupting, just excuse yourself from the conversation.
by repeatedly excusing yourself from the conversations, it's likely you let the a*holes and rude ones dominate the situation and let them exert more influence in work places or other social avenues.
I have been struggling to find out better solutions, if they are out there.
I let people interrupt me, up to a point. When I was young I had a terrible temper and I'm pretty quick verbally, so it was easy for a disagreement to escalate into a fight as I would try to keep getting the upper hand. Eventually I grew out of it. (Of course not every interruption is meant to be confrontational or aggressive - my post above was slanted a bit towards those situations, I think because of the James Bond reference :-) )
I'll let someone interrupt me 2 or 3 times. If it's with a question I can answer in a single sentence I'll do so and move on, if it's complex then I'll reply that 'I'm coming to that,' assuming of course that it's relevant. If they're just venting without saying anything, I'll just reply 'I see.' and move on. If a person persists in interrupting, I'll ask him (it's almost always a guy thing) 'are you finished?' and ask again if necessary. If they really can't help themselves, eventually I'll say 'look, I didn't interrupt you when you were talking. Please show me the same courtesy.' That's generally enough to make the point without raising the temperature. In a tense conversation I'll also make a deliberate effort to slow down my speech. It helps me stay calm and and it also gives my remarks more weight.
Although I talked about many situations involving verbal conflict, I'd like to stress that I don't see it as a matter of winning and losing. Often disagreements arise because people want to express their frustration but can't see a constructive path to resolve differences of opinion or interest. De-escalating the situation is a way to let the air out of the balloon slowly instead of with a bang, and reduce people's stress level. Books on mediation have lots of good techniques on this, and you can find mediation classes in many major cities - going to a professional mediator is often cheaper and more effective than getting into a lawsuit, so courts often encourage it.
I wouldn't claim to be some sort of conversational amster who never turns a hair. I frequently yell at inanimate objects, my phone and so on :-)
Yip, I think I just need to say something, he's actually a great guy, it's just he gets interested in conversations and always has something to say. It's not a dominance thing, just an interrupting thing.
I have become better at these sorts of conversations, but still struggle with confrontation. One book I found _excellet_ was Crucial Conversations, really really good.
On the other-side, be careful about talking whenever you are angry or having strong feeling. Most probably you will say things which you never meant or will regret saying. Simply your emotions takes hold of you over your reason. Overall beautiful response, can't agree more.
> Learn to control your own emotions.
THIS. When this topic comes up, you can read everything you want about tactics and take to heart the entirety of "How to make friends and influence people", but none of it means anything if you can't keep your cool. All the people you mentioned keep an air of amused mastery about them. Having an irrational confidence in yourself helps with that. It's like they're amused at the idea that any particular situation, person or statement could possibly make their martini taste bad.
Thanks mate. This was helpful.
Haven't been born with wit and so I make it a point to observe those who have it..
i am not a smart speaker, but what helps me is to take notes of the main point of argument; this helps me to focus and to address the issues that have been raised.