Good Conversations Have Lots of Doorknobs

So why don’t people talk more? Epley continued his research and came up with an answer to the mystery: We don’t start conversations because we’re bad at predicting how much we’ll enjoy them. We underestimate how much others want to talk; we underestimate how much we will learn; we underestimate how quickly other people will want to go deep and get

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You cannot force good conversations to happen. You have to allow and invite them

The best we can do is offer our interlocutors all sorts of doorknobs––ornate French door handles, commercial-grade push bars, ADA-compliant auto-open buttons––and listen closely for any that they might give us in return. The best improvisers, like the best conversation partners, have very sharp hearing; they can echolocate a door slightly left ajar... See more