Chat Someone / Listening, The Harder Half

Follow Up On What Was Just Said Instead Of Moving On

The best next question is almost always in their last answer.

Many people approach conversation with an internal list. Ask about the job, ask about the family, ask about the holiday, tick, tick, tick. It keeps the air moving and it produces almost nothing. The list guarantees that you will never go more than one layer deep on anything, because the moment an answer arrives you are already reaching for the next item. The alternative is simpler and much harder: throw away the list, and take your next question out of the sentence they just finished. Something in it will be unexplained, or surprising, or slightly more alive than the rest. Ask about that.

Following up is what turns an interview into a conversation. It also signals something no amount of nodding can fake, which is that you were actually here for the last thirty seconds. People notice when a question could only have come from listening to them specifically. They tend to respond by giving more, because it is now clear that the giving is going somewhere. Two or three follow ups in a row on the same thread will get you further into someone than twenty separate topics, and the thread does not have to be important. Small subjects go deep readily if nobody keeps changing them.

The main obstacle is a fear of seeming stuck, as though a good conversationalist keeps producing new material. The opposite is true. Rushing to a new topic usually signals that the previous one was not interesting to you, which is a small rejection even when it is not meant as one. If you genuinely have run out of interest in a thread, let it close properly rather than jumping. And if you cannot think of a follow up, saying plainly that you would like to hear more about the part they mentioned in passing works every single time, and costs nothing but a moment of feeling unclever.