conversational dance

Have you ever talked to someone and started adopting their small peculiar accents and common words they use? Conversation is like a dance (I can’t dance, but this analogy seem to fit) – you catch the tone and drift of someone’s talk, respond to it, adapt and create a rhythm with which you can connect. It is like micro expression reading (I can’t do that well, maybe a little bit). Small variations in tone indicating irritation, anger, impatience, frustration – all of which needs to be solved on the fly by changing the dance moves. If it is happiness, passion, excitement, eagerness – can work with it and jive more. If it is monotonous from one side, without paying close attention to the rhythms of the other, it can look robotic and boring soon and we break off soon.

I read this recently about Aristotle (it is interesting to note that the ancients have pretty well figured out the inner workings of a human being – they had a lot of time to think about it without distractions and map out the mind.):-

He invented what we still call rhetoric, the art of getting people to agree with you. We wanted thoughtful, serious and well-intentioned people to learn how to be persuasive, to reach those who don’t agree already.

He makes some timeless points: you have to soothe people’s fears, you have to see the emotional side of the issue – Is someone’s pride on the line? Are they feeling embarrassed? – and edge around it accordingly. You have to make it funny because attention spans are short, and you might have to use illustrations and examples to make your point come alive.

I realize many times we can’t use a single dimension of pure logic to make someone agree. Appealing to the ego, making it look it was their idea to start with (like one scene in the movie “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” where the mother makes the father agree to something by making it look like he came up with the idea in the first place), telling them that there is no threat, making them look good in the process, agreeing with them in some parts – all the tricks in the book may be needed.