I've been at a conference for
the last couple of days, and have spent a significant portion of that
time eavesdropping on conversations. Aside from the obvious
observations (that most people don't listen, and that men do most of
the talking and interrupting in mixed company conversations) what most astonished me was the unintended lack of politeness and courtesy that seems to characterize most conversations.
It's not that the participants are rude -- it's just that they seem to
lack mutually-understood and mutually-respected protocols to govern
conversation in a civilized manner. This, in a world in which we are
beleaguered by rules in almost everything else we do, seems remarkable
to me.
So I did a bit of research to see whether I could find some protocols,
some rules of behaviour, that work effectively regardless of the
number, gender or conversational style of the participants. The
longest-established protocol is also, it seems, the most misunderstood.
This is the protocol of the Talking Stick,
which has its roots in aboriginal American culture and in that of some
third-world cultures as well. The basic rules of the Talking Stick
protocol, from what I can ascertain, are as follows:
- The person holding the Talking Stick is the only one who
can speak.Others must listen and not interrupt, even to ask clarifying
questions. The onus is on the speaker to be clear, brief, and
respectful.
- Generally the person most respected by the group (the
tribal elder, or the person selected by the elder to present the issue
to the group) talks first.
- The Talking Stick is then passed clockwise as each person
finishes, and makes one complete circle of the participants.
Participants with nothing to add simply pass the Stick along.
- The person who spoke first asks then whether additional
discussion is warranted, and if anyone thinks so, the Stick is again
passed around the circle.
There have been a number of 'improvements' suggested to this process,
such as allowing clarifying questions, allowing people to reach for the
stick in any order, first-come, first-served, and summarization or
'voting' processes, but none of these enhancements has a distinguished
history and none in my opinion represents a significant improvement to
the basic protocol. Allowing the group to engage in two-person
iterative Q&A, or sidebar conversations, would seem to me to
abrogate the three duties of clarity, brevity and respectfulness, or at
least render them less necessary. In some Talking Stick circles, if you
take the stick you must begin your speech by briefly reiterating what
the previous speaker said, and only when that synopsis receives a nod
from the previous speaker can you begin saying your piece. In some
cases this might work brilliantly, but in others it could make the
conversation interminably long and repetitive.
It is not clear to what extent the Law of Two Feet
applies in Talking Stick circles -- where if you find the discussion
valueless or frustrating you have the option to leave, without
repercussions, and perhaps start another conversation on the same or
another subject with those similarly inclined. The alternative would be
to assume that if you chose to accept the invitation to join the
conversation in the first place, you owe the rest of the group the
courtesy of giving them your attention until it is finished. My
personal view is that this judgement (whether leaving a conversation
you find tedious is discourteous or not) is best left up to the
individual.
I have witnessed many 'moderated' conversations, where one person
decides who will speak next, or where people raise their hands to be
next to speak and a first-come, first-served honour system applies, and
found them mostly frustrating. But anarchy, where the loudest voice
always prevails, seems to me even more so, and also unfair. Where the
participants are part of a hierarchy, and rank clearly determines
speaking priority, the result is too often not really conversation at
all, but rather an information reporting and instruction exercise.
I have witnessed, too, meetings that allow the listeners to use tacit
signals to prompt the speaker without interrupting them: Holding up a
green card means "I like what you're saying", a red card the opposite,
and a yellow card signals "I don't understand what you're saying". They
tend not to work, I think, because the green encourages unnecessary
loquaciousness, the red is rarely used because it would be perceived as
rude, and the yellow is rarely used because it might make the listener
appear stupid. Electronic equivalents (IMs that the speaker can read
on-screen while talking) present the same discouragements, and also are
more of a distractions than most speakers can handle on the fly.
One of my favourite conversational formats is the interview/Q&A,
where one (or more) persons pose questions and the other(s) restrict
themselves to answering them. There is a certain inherent democracy in
such conversations -- each side gives up certain speaking rights in
return for receiving others. Unrehearsed, they require considerable
skill and agility to pull off eloquently. Rehearsed, they can be
extremely effective at transferring knowledge but they become less
conversations than performances.
So my sense, based more on observations of what doesn't work than what
does, would be that the use of a Talking Stick or similar icon might be
very helpful, even in two-person conversations (to reduce propensity to
interrupt). I'm ambivalent about whether passing the Stick clockwise or
allowing anyone to grab it next providing they satisfactorily summarize
the last speaker's message first, would work better -- and I suspect it
would depend on the subject and the conversational style of the
participants. I do like the idea of using a subtle timer
to reinforce the importance of clarity and brevity, which seem so
absent in most modern conversations that the resulting incoherence is
often unintentionally hilarious to the eavesdropper. Beyond that, I'm
not partial to any 'improvements' to the basic four-rule Talking Stick
process described above.
What's worked for you? Have you tried using such techniques, and when
are they effective (and not)? Are there other techniques, newer or
older, that work better, and when are they appropriate? And what of
telephone and Skype conversations, or those anarchic multi-party IM
sessions? Could a 'virtual Talking Stick' be introduced to organize
such conversations? It should be easy enough for the technology to
handle, but has anyone actually tried imposing this kind of discipline
on non-face-to-face conversations? And perhaps most important, does
practice using these techniques tend to make more polite, respectful
and articulate conversations second nature? Or is there some reason I'm
missing why interruption and 'louder voices prevail' protocols are so
prevalent in our conversations, seemingly by default?
|
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
