Conversing in the car

 

I took my now-retired English teacher from school at Uppingham, Gordon Braddy, on a day trip to the Barber Institute of Fine Arts at Birmingham University.

 

We saw so many fine works there ‒ Botticelli, Veronese, van Dyck, Rubens, Poussin, Dahl (above*), Murillo, Gainsborough, Turner, Rossetti, Pissarro, Manet, Degas, Monet, van Gogh, Rodin, Gauguin, Derain, Magritte, Hodgkin… His first time there.

The journey was some two hours by car in each direction (including me losing my way in both directions, somewhere around Spaghetti Junction). We talked intimately and continuously.

At one point, Gordon remarked how good such journeys are in promoting rich conversation… ‘much better than trains.’

I suppose the fact that driver and passenger sit so close to one another, but necessarily without eye contact, has a lot to do with that.  

*Johan Christian Dahl (1785-1857, Norwegian), ‘Mother and Child by the Sea’

Conversation not Presentation

In a current article in Forbes*, my colleague George Bradt enjoins us to give up on presentations and have conversations instead.

 

My own epiphany on this subject came on a trip to Hamburg. I had been expecting a one-to-one meeting to discuss innovation with the Unilever marketing director there. Instead I was confronted by a phalanx of marketing, innovation and R&D people.

 

‘Well, Roger, we are greatly looking forward to your presentation,’ said Herr Marketing Director.

Presentation? What presentation? I didn’t have one.

 

‘Sorry,’ I responded. ‘But I think it would be much more useful if we were to have a conversation.’

 

There was much puzzlement around the room. What kind of presentation was a conversation?

 

It took a while to get going, but in the end it was richer and more thought-provoking than any presentation, tapping into all their shared knowledge and insight and enthusiasm. And mine too.

 

*http://www.forbes.com/sites/georgebradt/2014/09/10/big-presentation-dont-do-it-have-a-conversation-instead/ 

 

The Art of Conversation - is it dead?

I don’t know why there is so much noise in the system about email, Facebook, Twitter, text messaging and the rest – all of them apparently destroying the so-called Art of Conversation.

In reality they do exactly the reverse, bringing new forms of conversation (with old and new friends and acquaintances) via new media.

And the issues involved in dialogue are just the same as in face-to-face intercourse – inability to listen, not sharing the airtime, assuming negative intention, sarcasm masquerading as humour and so on.

Of course there are new social protocols which grow up around each new channel. Enjoyable to learn (and to ignore).

For example, “Hello” was first coined in response to the need for an ice-breaker on new-fangled telephone calls. It’s credited to Thomas Edison in 1877.