Hi, beautiful spot isn’t it? Are you just here on holiday or do you live here? Do you come here often? Have you done much exploring of the local area? How old is your daughter? What’s your dog’s name? What do you do for work? That’s interesting, what does that involve?
These are a few of the questions I asked a woman I met at the beach yesterday. She, like us, is on Easter holidays with her family, making the most of the last few warmish days of Autumn. Alice had seen their dog from a distance and ran straight up to them, introduced herself and asked if she could throw the ball for the dog.
This simple event started the wheels in motion. I was now in the process of being ‘setup’ by my kids. I appreciate that there are millions of different ways to meet another human being but ‘playground parents’ is a category all on its own. What separates this method from others is the fact the kids are the catalyst.
If you’re lucky, it will be like yesterday when Alice cutely introduced herself and asked to play with their dog. Sometimes it is less cute, like when Frank went through a phase of smashing other kids' sandcastles and I had to follow him around apologising to other families. Whatever the event that drew you together, you’re now standing shoulder to shoulder with a complete stranger making small talk.
I always find this moment, the first few minutes you spend with a stranger, to be quite thrilling. Which way is it going to go? Will they engage with you or not? How are they going to react when you inevitably end up swearing or having to yell at the kids? How long will it take for you to hit a topic that a deeper conversation will grow from?
Sometimes it reminds me of pushing a car to jump start it. It can be hard work trying to engage with someone who you’ve only just met. It takes energy and, more importantly, requires you to be vulnerable. At this stage the only thing you have in common are the kids. Those first few questions can fall totally flat when you get nothing but one word responses. However, most of the time, the momentum starts to build and the car starts to roll on its own. On a great day, the engine roars into life and you find yourself ignoring the children who brought you together in the first place and are fully engrossed in a delightful, fun and interesting conversation.
It’s only over the last few years I’ve really come to appreciate what a skill ‘meeting new people’ is. It's something I’ve always taken for granted, not that it comes naturally to me, but at least I enjoy it and have actively been trying to get better at it. Like any skill it‘s something that can be exercised and made stronger and more proficient by using it.
Luckily the key to starting conversations is simple.
Ask questions. Ask heaps of questions. This seems like common sense but you’d be amazed at how many people don’t ask questions. This is why conversations fall flat in my opinion. If you think of a conversation as a game of ping pong. It's about sending and receiving, back and forth, question and response then following through with another question. I also believe that ‘question asking’ is a good indicator of a relationship's health.
I recently got an Apple Watch which is now telling me when I have to stand and run and breathe. It’s gamatised my day. I didn't think I’d be into it at first but it turns out that competing against yourself is actually quite a motivator. I wonder if Apple has a ‘questions asked’ app? Wouldn’t it be great if it noted the amount of questions you asked over a day. The result would represent how engaged you were with others, how much you learnt and how many ideas you exchanged.
I don’t think you can ask too many questions. There’s obviously a balance between conversation and interrogation but we humans are all quite selfish creatures who want to talk about ourselves so being asked a stack of questions gives us the opportunity to comfortably do so. Talking constantly about yourself when no-one is asking questions is narcissism I believe?
I’ve set myself the simple task of asking just one more question. Like the game of ping pong you never know what you’ll get returned to you. It could fall flat and that's ok. It could ricochet off the table and land somewhere you never expected or, at its best, it could give you a deeper understanding of someone you care about. Kids ask endless questions because it's how they learn about the world. It's important to remember that even as adults we still have just as much to learn about the world as they do, don’t you think?
