How to Turn an Awkward Conversation Into an Easy Chat

Social dos and dont’s can be useful guides, but high-quality interactions require “contingent responding”

Ashley Pallathra and Edward Brodkin
Forge
Published in
5 min readJun 13, 2021

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Warren Wong via Unsplash

“Five things you shouldn’t say to people who are grieving.” “Do’s and don’ts for first dates.” “Three ways to have ‘the talk’ about where your relationship is going.” We see stories with titles like these all the time. Rules of thumb for social situations can be really helpful. It’s hard to know what to say to a grieving person, and who wants to say the “wrong” thing and hurt them more? Who wouldn’t want that first date you’re excited about to go well? And who couldn’t use tips on how to approach difficult topics with a partner, like where your relationship is going or addressing elephants in the room? But while rules of thumb can help, they’re only a starting point. Take them for what they are — useful, but limited advice — and don’t expect that they can get you all the way to high quality connections.

Social scripts and guidelines help most when you’re unsure of what to do in a certain situation, when it’s new for you, or when it’s just really uncomfortable for whatever reason. Here’s an example from our own lives as mental health providers. When we were first learning to interview patients in mental health clinics, we relied on standardized lists of questions to ask, as well as interviewing guidelines that our professors gave us. Even with this level of preparation, though, our hearts raced and our palms were sweaty as we walked into our first few interviews. It felt so awkward to have to ask strangers about their most personal, emotional issues. What if they saw right through us, and realized how unskilled and nervous we were?

Sure enough, those first interviews were awkward, usually because we would run through our list of questions, and be more focused on trying to remember the questions on our list than on the subtle cues and fleeting emotions expressed by our patients. When the conversation veered off-script, we weren’t quite sure how to get things back on track. The problem with relying too much on rules and scripts is that they didn’t always fit the situation or the person we were talking to. And being so focused on remembering the lists and guidelines, we couldn’t fully attend to the person in front…

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Ashley Pallathra and Edward Brodkin
Forge
Writer for

Co-authors of the new book “Missing Each Other: How to Cultivate Meaningful Connections.” Twitter: @ashleypallathra @tedbrodkin