I’m hosting Thanksgiving for my extended family this year, and I want it to be restorative and fun.
To set the mood, I’ll have my customary scratch-off tickets at every place setting. And I’ll ask a few questions that people can answer while we eat, like: What’s your unconventional love language?
My father, for example, will admit that his is giving warnings. If he notices something amiss — my overflowing gutters, an aching knee I’m ignoring — he’ll warn that if I don’t take action, I’m “in for a world of hurt.”
For my dad, scaring is caring. “It’s your funeral,” another one of his favorite phrases, means “I love you.”
I’m hoping this question leads to interesting conversations among my family members. We’re not likely to fight about politics (my colleague Catherine Pearson wrote about families who are). But awkward moments happen.
Prepping a few talking points before a holiday gathering may seem forced, said Alison Wood Brooks, a professor at the Harvard Business School and the author of “Talk: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves.” But in her research, Dr. Brooks found that just 30 seconds of brainstorming ahead of time improved the flow of conversation.
I talked to Dr. Brooks and other experts about how to have conversations at your next get-together that are, as Dr. Brooks writes, “rich, juicy and fun.”
Go past ‘how are you?’
Celeste Headlee, the author of “We Need to Talk: How to Have Conversations That Matter,” maintains that asking a general question about how someone is doing may not lead anywhere because “people have pat answers ready,” she said. “Almost everyone is going to say ‘fine.’”
Instead, be more specific, she said, with questions like, “What are you spending most of your time on?”
The best questions, Headlee added, invite people to talk about things they love, whether that’s food, movies or pets.
And try to do what Dr. Brooks calls the “hard cognitive work” of really listening. She has found in her research that during a conversation, subjects’ minds were wandering nearly a quarter of the time.
Instead, practice what she calls “responsive listening,” which is mutually beneficial: It helps you pay closer attention and encourages the person who is speaking.
Dr. Brooks said that great listening was expressed through some sort of verbal response, whether it’s a joke that builds on something the person said, paraphrasing, a verbal confirmation (“exactly”) or a follow-up question that shows you’re paying attention. These keep the conversation bubbling along and work for groups as well as one on one, she said.
Be a ‘topic manager.’
There are a few small signs that a conversation is growing tired, Dr. Brooks explained: Pauses grow a little longer, there may be more uncomfortable laughter, or people start repeating things that they’ve already said on the topic.
If that happens, jump in and change the subject, Dr. Brooks said. Her research has found that people who switch topics frequently — roughly once every minute — had more satisfying conversations.
You don’t have to do it that much, she said. “But the takeaway is, if a topic feels like it’s getting stale, be empowered, be confident and switch.” The new subject, she added, “doesn’t have to be funny or clever — it just needs to be different.”
If you’re hosting, you can appoint yourself “topic manager” or enlist someone else ahead of time to keep the chat flowing and ensure that everyone feels included. If Uncle Stu is dominating the conversation, she said, “be like an air traffic controller and redirect to someone else who’s sitting at the table.”
Try these icebreakers.
Rob Walker, the author of “The Art of Noticing,” has a Substack newsletter of the same name in which he collects icebreakers from readers. Here are a few of my favorites:
What’s something you believe in but can’t prove?
What’s the worst advice you’ve ever been given?
Tell me about a person that you met only once who really made an impact on you.
When were you sure a bad outcome would be your ruin, but in fact it turned out to your benefit?
When all else fails: reshuffle.
Have you ever been to a gathering where one end of the table was a raucous party and the other was deathly quiet? If people are talking in small groups, break this up by building in a time to reshuffle, Dr. Brooks said. Between dinner and dessert, for example, you can ask that everyone change seats.
You can also assign seating so there’s a good mix of talkers, she said, or enlist one of your more extroverted friends or relatives to be a conversational steward who can circulate among different groups. “They can sit down and engage with the shy nieces who are struggling to carry the conversation forward,” she said.
If I were to answer the question I’m posing at Thanksgiving, I think my unconventional love language is similar to my dad’s: dispensing advice. I hope that at some point, I’ve been able to spare you a world of hurt, too.
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Read the article: How Healthy Are Sweet Potatoes?
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Let’s keep the conversation going. Follow Well on Instagram, or write to us at [email protected]. And check out last week’s newsletter about how to embrace winter.
The post How to Avoid Awkward Holiday Conversations appeared first on New York Times.
