I like a good conversation.  Not chit chat.  Not idle gossip.  I think a good conversation should be holy.  I don’t mean religious, formal, or pretentious, but holy as in honorable and sacred and exhilarating.

I like good conversations, although my best conversations tend to occur in my own mind, with me and me (a bit self-indulgent, eh?).  I know what you’re thinking:  “He likes to talk to himself because then he’s always right.”  Hardly.  In my own mind I am rarely right.  I doubt, challenge, and argue with even my best ideas.  Imagine the self-mockery when I have a lousy idea.

What Is A Conversation?

Why are good conversations so difficult?  I was surprised when I looked up the word.  Conversation originally meant “to live with, keep company with” and more literally, “to turn about with”¹ . 

This helps me.  Too often I enter a conversation supposedly to share what I know and then hear what you know, which is precisely why I like e-mails.  No nonsense, just tell me what you know.  I’ll save it in a folder.  Just type it up and send it.  I’ll save your information, you save mine.  Sometimes this is OK, but it’s not a conversation.

A Good Conversation Is Like Dancing

A good conversation is better than information sharing.  A good conversation is like dancing.  Linda and I are taking ballroom dancing lessons.  Imagine the chaos.  We are learning conversation without words.  When she and I dance, sometimes she knows where I am going, sometimes she doesn’t.  Sometimes I go left and she follows, other times I go left and she goes somewhere else (…the nerve of her!).  This directional confusion is usually not her fault because I am not very good about communicating where we are supposed to be going.

I Don’t Know Where We Are Going!

The big problem is not how to let her know where we are going (although that’s hard too).  The big problem is that I don’t know where we are going!  Like a good conversation, when Linda and I dance we go places we never intended.  We go places that surprise us.  We turn about together.  Sometimes we turn too much or not enough, or too slowly or too fast.  Often I add steps that don’t belong.  In the end, the dance is exhilarating and sacred, even with the chaos and doubt.  The dance is still a good dance, even when we don’t get it exactly right. 

I think a good conversation requires a bit of chaos and doubt.  We need to wonder together.  We need to explore together.  We need to ask questions together.  In a good conversation we need to doubt together.  We need to be willing to not get it exactly right.  Otherwise, just send me an e-mail and I’ll save your information in a folder. 

Like a dance, in a good conversation we turn here and there to discover surprises together.  A good conversation requires a quiet agreement that we might not find the answers we expect, but we will turn about together long enough and enough times to get a bit closer to some answer. 

We Might Not End Up In The Same Place

Like a dance, a good conversation also requires a quiet agreement that we might not end up in the same place.  Our dance lessons have taught me that Linda and I can enjoy the sacred exhilaration of dance even when she and I end up in different places (which is often).  This is still a good conversation.  

Is it OK to end up in different places?  Our dance instructor, Jose, might have something different to say about it.  But I think a good conversation requires another quiet agreement.  This could be the toughest one of all.  We must agree to doubt ourselves.  Do I doubt myself — just enough — so that when you and I end the conversation in different places, I am willing to acknowledge that you’re in the right place and I am not?  Or, can we agree that there is no ”right place”, but we are simply in different places? 

You might recall my earlier articles, As Far As I Know and Transformational Leadership: Lots Of Questions, Waiting For A Few Good Answers where I suggest that questioning my personal assumptions – a bit of self-doubt – is a good thing.  David Dark in his book The Sacredness of Questioning Everything² helps me respect the role of questioning and doubt — even self-doubt — especially if I want to experience good conversation.

I like good conversation.  We all need good conversation, in every relationship — at home, at work, in government and across governments, in religion and across religions, and across cultures.  I like good conversation and I have some hope about it because I like a good dance too, even if I don’t know where we are going, and even if you and I do not end up in the same place.

© Copyright by Jeffrey Y. Harlow, Ph.D (2009).

1. This helps me understand the connection between the verb and adjective forms of the root converse.  The verb converse means to communicate with, the adjective converse means “exact opposite”, which is derived from “to turn around”.
2. Dark, James David (2009). The Sacredness Of Questioning Everything. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Press.