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Practice makes perfect with communication too.

I am reading a particularly interesting book at the moment...
Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin and although I am still to be convinced by some of the argument, the book did get me thinking about how we practice and what we practice.

In particular I started thinking about a topic which has come up and awful lot this week, communication. Why is it that we usually wait until communication breaks down before we do something about it? But instead what if we decided to proactively practice our communication.

So, I am going to pick a frequently discussed coaching topic "real conversations' v' 'talking' and challenge anyone out there who reads this to do the following exercise with their family, whatever it's shape, size and dynamic.

Your challenge is to sit together in a room for more than 30 mins and have a 'real' conversation, that is a conversation where you learn something about someone else in the room, about what they think or believe.

And here are the 'rules'.
1) The topic must be general, not related to an individual in the room- so no school, work, or activities based conversation.
2) It must not involve planning something (eg:- a holiday) or logistics.
3) The participants must all be involved, so no 'I have no idea' or 'I do not have an opinion.'
4) iI needs to be a topic big enough/ novel enough to learn something new.
5) Everybody has a right to be heard and a right for judgement to be suspended on their ideas.

Some topic ideas.
  • Do people engage in enough face to face conversations?
  • What is the most important lesson from the past we as a society are failing to listen to and which one do we do well?
  • What does being a refugee mean, and what circumstances would force you to be a refugee?
  • Do we really have freedom of speech?
  • What is democracy and what does that mean for us on a daily basis?
  • If your family was running the country what would you do differently and what the same?
  • Or another of your choice.


Controversial and real? Have fun practicing a real conversation and I would be very interested to know how you faired.
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