1. Long, rambling answers;
2. Fumbling around your fit;
3. Faking something you don’t know;
4. Over-reliance on a single source of company information;
5. Obsessing past events.
Communicating With a Chatterbox
Some people never stop talking due to constant chatter inside their head. This thicket of noise can make talking (and listening) to them monumentally challenging.
When people carry a lot of chatter in their heads, these unordered, tangential thoughts can leak out all over their conversations in a stream of consciousness style. This makes it almost impossible to figure out what’s meaningful information and what’s just noise.
Conversations: Beginning to End
When it comes to communication, the beginning and the end of conversations are both critically important, although for different reasons.
At the beginning, people are sizing up what we are saying and trying hard to determine if they should keep listening to us. The beginning is also when we have some of their most focused attention, which makes it the best time to hit them with our best evidence if our goal is persuasion.
Key Rules for Effective Conversational Containment
Not only is this consulting free, it is meaningful.
Here are four tips to get you started on building your containment muscle. For a discussion of why containment matters, refer to Keep Conversations from Escalating.
Reduce Conversational Distractions
Distracted communication is degraded communication. Eliminate distractions wherever possible, and minimize their impact when they cannot be avoided. Don’t accept distractions at face value—if you can eliminate, moderate or otherwise reduce a distraction in your environment, do it, and your communication will almost certainly improve.