#63 - How to Avoid Awkward Silence in Conversation

Check, check, check, check.

Today is a day where we are going to discuss one of the biggest questions I get asked in the whole communication landscape.

And this is from my social media, or emails, or phone calls, where people ask me in person, they say, Chris, I don't know how to keep conversation going.

I find myself getting in points to where I don't know what to say.

And then there's a lull, and the conversation becomes awkward.

How do I get through there?

How do I know what to say?

So if you haven't been here before, we are going to address this topic.

This is the Talk to People Podcast.

My name's Chris Miller, and the whole podcast is dedicated towards becoming a more effective communicator so that you can grow in social connection and live a better life.

We believe that life is better when you talk to people, and studies show, as well as our life experience, that the better you can articulate your thought, and the better you can connect with those around you, then the better your experience is going to be.

So, let's get started.

A lot of us don't know what to say because of three main reasons.

The first main reason is we may not know the person we're talking to all that well.

So, this is, I'd say, typically one of the most common things that we deal with whenever we find ourselves in this situation because if you're talking to a best friend, more than likely you won't be trying to find, what do I say, what do I say, or having that internal panic, having that internal monologue.

Rather, it's going to be someone that you're not familiar with because you don't exactly know what avenues to go down.

Having a conversation is like going on a walk with somebody, right?

But even though there's conversational turn-taking, you all are both having a chance at being able to build this whole conversation.

There are moments where you lead one another.

And whenever you don't know one another, it's hard to know where to lead one another.

So that's one of the first reasons why we get to a point to where we don't know what to say.

We don't know the other person that well.

The second thing is we deal with some internal self-critical thoughts, particularly self-dismissive thoughts.

So we may have an idea of something to say, but we speak ourselves out of it.

We say, no, don't say that, or don't ask that.

And what more than likely would have created a good conversation or a decent conversation actually ends up getting us to a point before we don't know what to say, and to a point to where we feel awkward and we feel like there's awkwardness on the other side.

So one, we don't know the person.

Two, we do have thoughts that we'd like to share, but we talk ourselves out of sharing them.

And then the last thing where we don't know what to say is we could be surprised or put back by a certain part of the conversation that's already happened.

So this is typically what people refer to as the word speechless.

Something happened and I was speechless, or they said this and I was speechless.

And this is inevitable because we can't predict what's going to come down the pipeline when we're in conversation.

Someone could walk up to you and say something completely outlandish, and we can't have a crystal ball that's going to tell us exactly what to say.

So it's a pretty common thing to be put in a position of, I have no idea what I'm going to say.

I have no idea how I'm going to navigate this.

So what do we do when we're in those positions?

The first thing, I'm going to do like a four-step protocol here.

The first thing, whenever you're put in a position where you don't know what to say, is to say to yourself, not out loud, this is intrapersonal communication.

You are talking to yourself.

You are going to go straight to the executive table of your whole entire mind.

If you've ever seen Inside Out, I'm imagining this is where anger is and happiness, and you say, hey, it's going to be okay.

Okay, relax, it's going to be okay.

Even though I don't know what to say in this moment, you have to self-soothe.

Take a breath.

It doesn't have to be like a really big breath, but just be thinking like, okay, hey, this is all right.

The second thing is that you can...

Now I'm losing my thought.

I'm talking about how to have conversation and keep things going.

And here I am recording a podcast, and I'm like, okay, I got to keep things going.

But after you self-soothe, the second thing is either use a model so you have some type of thing to fall back on.

This is what's so beautiful about the content I create and the content people in this sphere create, content about communication, because the more you listen to it and the more that you ingrain it into who you are, then the more likely you are to remember it when you really need it.

And regardless of what you do for work, regardless of where you live, regardless of how you live, there are going to be moments where you're going to need to communicate well.

So that's the beauty of content like this is we get to listen to it, soak it in, listen to it again, staying consistent.

The more we do that, the more we're just putting our brains, all of the fixed set of neurons we have, we're putting them to work about communication.

So some models that you all should know, that we should know, that we could lean on going forward, the first is the Ford model, F-O-R-D.

So think of the Ford truck.

The Ford model stands for F is for, F is for friends who do things together.

I mean, theoretically, you could do that.

The fun model, F is for friends who do things together, U is for you and me, N is for anyone, anytime at all.

No, that's not as helpful when we actually think about conversation.

So the F in the Ford model, the F stands for family, but you can make this family and friends.

So in conversation, you can always, depending on the person, if, for instance, say we're talking to someone at work, this person is 45 years old and they have two kids, their brother just had another kids, and in addition to that, they have nieces and nephews, we're fairly close to them.

So we could say like, hey, how was it when you visited your parents?

Or how was your son's soccer game?

How was your daughter's ballet?

How was your daughter's soccer game?

How was your son's ballet?

Maybe they got a boxer.

Or you could ask about friends.

Hey, I know you're doing that barbecue.

The O is for occupation.

So this is regarding work.

We talk about this a lot.

It's funny because we even use this as an initiation.

After we get people's names, we'll say, so what do you do?

So we naturally, our society, especially since it's pretty individualistic, Western society, what people do is very important to us.

And we seek that out a lot.

You may want to challenge yourself not to ask the super predictable questions like that, because we hear them so much that we kind of check out.

We have autopilot for those answers.

I remember Mike Garrish, he was one of the first guests to come on the podcast.

His wife will answer that question with the most crazy answers, just because she's like, come on, let's make the conversation fun.

But O is for occupation.

So you could be asking, hey, how's your job going?

Or what's your favorite part about your job?

What's your least favorite part about your job?

How long do you see yourself doing your job?

What was it like when you started your job?

Are you getting along with people at your job?

Could you tell me something about your job that people wouldn't expect?

What's upcoming in your industry?

What's the exciting new developments?

What does it look like?

Competitor wise, who are your biggest competitors?

What's the culture at your job?

You can ask questions like that.

R is for recreation.

Remember, this is the Ford method, so F-O-R-D.

So when you're in conversation, you can be going through this in your head.

F-O-R-D.

Family and friends.

Can I ask a question about family and friends?

Occupation.

Can I ask them a question about their work?

Then R is for recreation.

What they do for fun?

What they like to do outside of work?

What they like to do with their family and friends?

I love to play soccer.

You could ask me, Hey Chris, how's soccer going?

Or, yeah, how's soccer going?

That'd be a good question for me.

Or, what surprised you most about the soccer league?

How do you feel like you could do better organizing the soccer league?

When do you see yourself stopping the soccer league?

When do you see, well, I don't think I could stop it now, which is a good thing.

It's gone beyond me, which is awesome.

Maybe when do you see yourself not attending, or is that even a thing in your head?

We could get into some fun conversation there, and that's just talking about soccer.

We're not even talking about what I'm doing for YouTube or the podcast, I'd consider that recreation.

D is for dreams.

This is really fun to talk about because dreams have a big time horizon.

If you're having a banal, mundane conversation, and you feel like it's boring, maybe skip to D because dreams, you could do some really hypothetical questions.

You could break out of the box of clothes ended, near walled questions.

I'm talking, if you were to win the lottery, what would you do with it?

How would you spend it?

That's a funny dream question.

The bucket list questions.

What's the most unexpected thing on your bucket list?

Or tell me about a moment.

I'm trying to think of a conversation here, so I don't want to give questions that aren't actually practical.

So imagine you're talking to someone at the grocery store.

Maybe you get bold, and you're talking to them.

And actually at Qdobo, No Chipotle, Ocean Chipotle, at the line, I had a really refreshing, close to 10-minute conversation, because it was a long line with a woman who had grandkids, and she lived probably like 10 minutes away.

And I hadn't, like we lived two very different lives, but we got to have this conversation at Chipotle.

And she was talking to me about how she had just retired.

And I was asking her like, what like retirement is often seen with finality regarding employment.

And one of the things I was curious about was, are you pleased with where you ended your work life at?

Because she wasn't working anymore.

And do you feel like you were able to check the boxes of what you wanted to check the boxes?

And she was, she was really satisfied, which is great.

But those are dreams questions.

You are breaking out of the today, tomorrow, next week.

How's this?

How's that?

Are you excited about this?

And you are getting into the the five year horizon, the 10 year horizon, the three year horizon, or 30 year horizon, talking about the dreams.

So this is the Ford method, F-O-R-D.

And you can constantly be going through each of these pillars, family and friends, occupation, recreation and dreams.

And then quickly, one other helpful model that you can either stack on that, or you can use it to supplement other questions you're having, but it's just the narrative structure.

So if you think about a typical story arc narrative, you're going to have the beginning, and there's going to be the lead up to the beginning where you're not going to see much results.

Think about the person who chooses to pursue table tennis.

And they're just by themselves in the garage.

That's the very start.

But then they get on a competitive league, and they get a coach, and before they know it, they make it on the US.

Junior Nationals.

And they make it on the men's national team, and then they win a gold medal, and then they ultimately walk away from the sport, and they have to find another new thing.

So if you're talking to someone who has a really interesting story or you just want to know more about them, one way that you can do that is by following a typical story arc.

So that could be seen as simply as past, present, future.

But we can go a lot deeper than that, because think about a typical story arc.

Like we said, there's the very beginning where they're grinding.

They're working really hard, and no one knows about it.

This is the night before the overnight success.

So you could ask some really interesting questions here.

Like if you're talking to a musician, how did you get started, and what was it like playing whenever you knew you weren't playing live on stages?

What was the...

Think about a fireman.

How long did it take you to actually pass your tests?

Or what was the mental journey you went on to go from working a desk job to becoming a fireman?

Or someone who washes dishes at a restaurant, you say?

How have you enjoyed this experience?

What are your thoughts?

Are you wanting to do this for your whole entire life?

If not, what are you wanting to work on?

Because you're catching them, depending on where they're at, you're catching them at the very beginning of something, maybe in the middle of something, maybe it's someone who's really enjoying where they're at, or maybe at the end of something.

And there's so many different questions you can ask with that.

If you think about the arc, think about the downfall.

Maybe there's someone who messed up or they made a mistake, or then think about the other side, the breakthrough.

Like, what was the breakthrough like?

What did that look like?

And then at the very end of the arc, typically life is just a whole bunch of these things.

So at the very end of the arc, it leads into another one.

And we can talk about that point.

That's the point where we pivot or we transition or we change over.

So how did you get to that point?

Also really fascinating questions.

So whenever you can combine the two, right?

You could use this development arc in the past, present, future with the forward method.

So then we're talking about family, and we're talking like for younger people.

You know, it's really exciting to think about starting a family.

For people who are older, who have kids that are adults, that's really hard for the kids to leave the house, right?

Or for empty nesters, that can be really challenging.

Or for people who have a really good relationship with their adult kids, that's really exciting.

Or occupation, right?

Think about the past, present.

What was the breakthrough for your job?

What was the demise?

Where did it go bad?

What encouraged you to step away?

Recreation, like me for soccer.

The breakthrough was deciding I wanted to get people together, and it actually happening.

But unfortunately, there's injuries, and there's things that could take me away from the sport, which ultimately could go down, or maybe I choose to do something else, right?

And then dreams, a perfect way to stack on past, present, future.

So that's the way that you continue conversation.

You have to add these, and you need to ultimately be willing to say something.

More than likely, if you're listening to this podcast, you're going to say a good enough thing to keep things rolling.

So we don't want to keep this podcast rolling, because then we won't be able to do anything else, particularly me, because I need to go and publish it so that we all can listen to it together.

Upcoming, I'm going to be doing a micro episode series.

I'm actually going to be doing an episode per the 10 rules.

So I'm going to be doing a daily.

This is a 10-day spree.

10 mini episodes, I'm guessing like 10 to 12 minutes each episode, or maybe even less than that, maybe longer.

I'm not sure about the actual logistics there, but I'm going to start recording this upcoming week.

So I hope you are looking forward to that.

And I'm just going to try and add as much value as possible.

I use the podcast as a way to connect with you all.

So feel free to shoot me texts, send me emails, pop in the social media, let me know how you're doing.

Let me know how the communication is going, how the community in your life is going.

If there's any way I could help, but be expecting these mini episodes.