The Unwritten Rules of Conversation

Thank you all for an uplifting and productive first week of preplanning! So much positive energy, camaraderie, dialogue, and consistent messaging!

For me, there’s always a blend of excitement and nervousness as we begin prepping for and putting the finishing touches on what’s needed for a smooth opening of school as we get ready to welcome back our students and their parents next week.

Preplanning is my favorite time of year, specifically the opportunity for us to learn, grow, collaborate, and socialize together.

This year there’s a very palpable esprit de corps! 

For those of you new to Trinity, most Fridays during the school year, I send out a summary of an article that piqued my interest and that I hope provokes thought in you as well.

I don’t agree with every article, yet I enjoy ones that make me think, challenge me to reflect on my educational beliefs, and even confront my educational biases. As we discussed this week, keeping an open mind and being less judgmental are critical to being more accepting of others.

This week’s article summary is “The Hidden Heart of Every Conversation” from Psychology Today.

As much of preplanning has focused on the importance of relationships, this first summary is a reminder of the dos and don’ts of conversations in our jobs as well as our personal lives.

Within a school, we all have many daily interactions with students, colleagues, and parents as well as a myriad of meetings large and small. While teams typically establish team meeting norms, I find most of the time we informally operate under the unwritten rules below. 

I’m guessing most of us are better at monitoring ourselves than pointing out to others when they break these norms. Yesterday, one book talk group mentioned ‘wise criticism’, providing constructive suggestions for improving while doing so in a positive, productive manner.

I especially enjoyed the six habits to avoid, as I’ve been guilty of all six and have friends and family members break them as well.

Thanks again for a great start of the school year! Enjoy the last weekend of summer!

Joe

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Even though very few of us get formal instruction on how to conduct a conversation, we follow several “culturally absorbed conventions” that foster cooperation and increase the chance that a chat will be rewarding:

• Mutuality: Taking turns
• Relevance: What’s said relates to what has been said before
• Quantity; Saying enough to be informative, but not too much
• Quality: Being truthful
• Manner; Being direct and clear, unless there’s a good reason not to.

Below are six conversational habits to avoid:

• Interrupting, which can make it seem we don’t care what the other person is saying
• Story-topping, which shifts the conversation from connection to competition
• Being right, which makes the conversation about winning an argument
• Being all-knowing, explaining information without being asked for our expertise
• Bright-siding: Always encouraging others to be positive can feel invalidating
• Advice-giving when our conversational partner just wants empathy