07.25.07
Nine good, original links on conversation
There aren’t a ton of articles on my main site on making conversation. One reason for this is that I think you can do a lot to improve your conversational skills indirectly, and not by focusing too much on the little details. The larger reason though is that the topic has already been written about quite a bit. I like to give more attention to what I feel are less explored ideas.
But that’s just me. If you’re interested, here are some links to articles on conversation. My main criteria was to look for articles that cover new ideas besides the usual listen, smile, be interested, follow current events, offer compliments, ask open-ended questions, repeat what they said back at them-type advice. Not that that stuff is bad, just that you’ve probably heard it already.
My three conversations articles to start things off, in case you haven’t seen them:
Some ‘bigger picture’ thoughts on making conversation
Examples: Starting conversations, inviting people out, and more
How to do better in loud, crazy group conversations
By Scott H. Young - this guy mostly writes about productivity and changing your habits and stuff, but the handful of articles he’s written on social topics are pretty insightful:
Better conversations: Collecting life stories
Improve your conversations with stories
Two recent ones from lifehack.org:
Positivity Blog - another one of those eclectic personal development blogs that occasionally discusses socializing:
Do you make these 10 mistakes in a conversation?
5 conversational mistakes that can make you look dumb
Five awesome and five awful conversation topics
Best Tool For The Job - found this one pretty randomly:
How to have better conversations
And that’s it. It’s weird. I had some of these articles in mind going in, but the rest I pretty much found through Google. I intended to link to anything good that I found, but the only stuff I really liked was on blogs. All the non-blog stuff I found was either too short, basic/unoriginal, or obviously a teaser for some commercial program. Go figure.
