Have we lost the art of conversation ?

Who amongst us has had an hour plus conversation lately ?

I turned 44 this month and I’ve been in a reflection mode. I’ve joined an exciting professional adventure and I’ve also been asked to give of course on lessons on how to generate new business. I’ve been trying to find the red thread to my 20+ year career, and that got me thinking what inspired me when I was my firstborn son’s age, 11.

It led me to reflect on an art cultivated by too few these days, the art of true conversations. As a young boy I wanted to stay and hang out with the adults during family and friends gatherings. I was most fascinated by conversationalists and storytellers. Both are intimately linked in my view, what makes us humans is the ability to converse and exchange ideas.

I was fortunate to be near some master storytellers, some of whom I would later learn, where amongst the best salespeople in their field. One of them, Jean, was a longtime friend of my grandfather. He regaled his family and friends with a never-ending catalog of stories from his native Sicilian/Tunisian culture. He was also a wonderful conversationalist and as a young man impressed upon me some key life lessons. A veritable renaissance man, I learned from him in my early 20s that he was a practicing Freemason. If you know a bit about Freemasonry, the first year is spent in silence, while others present. This necessary and imposed exercise of listening is one of the first keys to the art of conversation.

Today’s world is traversed by epochal reality shifting technologies. I’m able to write this article by dictating it into an iPhone and it will be published on a web platform. The wonder this brings us is also a proven addictive time waster.

Who amongst you has had an hour plus non-work related conversation with a spouse, child or friend in the past year ?