Conversational Balance

How to complete Conversational Balance

Most people talk about themselves more than they realize, and the ones who feel 'great to talk to' are usually just generous with questions. Flipping your ratio for one event is a crash course in how much you normally dominate.

1. Open with a question about them, not an update about yourself.
2. When they answer, ask a follow-up about what they just said instead of pivoting to your own version.
3. Share enough to stay human (total silence about yourself reads as evasive), but keep it under a third of the airtime.
4. Notice the urge to cap their story with a bigger one of yours, and let it pass.

Tips

• 'Tell me more about that' and 'what was that like?' reopen almost any answer.
• Resist the one-up reflex: their trip reminds you of yours, but they were still talking.

What counts as done

You leave the event having clearly spent more time asking and listening than talking, and can recount several new things about other people.