This has a lot of good insight, but I was struck by how differently I experience
> “What’s up?” is one of the most dreadful texts to get; it’s short for “Hello, I’d like you to entertain me now.”
The typical response to "What's up?" from myself and, uh, nearly everyone I know, is some variation on
"Not much! What's up with you?" or
"[trivial recent happening, quickly related] So, what's been going on with you?"
...and that's because "What's up?" is nearly universally a way to prompt someone to ask you that question back, so you can tell them about the thing you really want to say without it seeming sudden or forced.
This reminds me of the “no hello” proposal for workplace chat messages (e.g. https://nohello.net/). It’s much less of a big deal for personal communication, but I can understand wanting someone to just say what they want to say without a manual SYN/ACK first.
As a developer who occasionally gets pulled in to help with urgent support issues, I dread bare hello messages. It gives me too much time to imagine a down site or some other critical event. Asking the question up front spares me a lot of stress.
You should essentially never do syn/ack IRL. If you don't know precisely what the recipient is doing, you do not know what they are doing, it could be important. Always lead with info to help them prioritize things. Ideally in the first ~5 words, because that's all they may see in the notification.
(this is also IMO why phone calls are terrible. they're the equivalent of "hello" over a channel that has no other message, so everything must be assumed to be maximum urgency or you might miss something truly critical)
The number of times that this has happened, with certain colleagues of mine, over Slack. Ugh.
Dude, if you had just skipped the really-actually-not-required-on-slack pleasantries, I could have already given you the information you needed, 16 hours ago.
I like the "hello" before someone engages in a chat because this way I can confirm that i) I am available to talk and ii) the message is safe (i.e. I am not displaying in front of 200 people and forgot to switch off IM).
If someone just wants to send me an information, email is great for that.
My personal order of contacts is snail mail → email → IM → phone → in person. Each of the steps is one order of magnitude of urgency greater than the previous one.
And I guarantee that others are annoyed when folks leap in with no lead in. And I am annoyed at people who ignore messages, even a basic “hello”. Seems pretty rude.
> i) I am available to talk and ii) the message is safe
If I’m at work, I’m always going to be available to talk, and anyway, nothing is lost by them sending me what they want to say and me responding when I become available.
I’m of the opinion that you shouldn’t ever send messages that are unsafe for 200 of your colleagues to see.
Try: "Oh, hello. Do you have time for a short chat right now about a database schema change?”
I almost always have time to fight fires — unless busy with a larger conflagration. I may or may not have the time to debate the finer points of table naming conventions however.
Without context I might say yes and then have to take it back once I discover the topic.
You're rebuilding TCP over UDP. Chat apps are connectionless (or RESTful, if you will). What makes them productive, especially in the workplace, is the fact that they can work without all the handshaking that accompanies more structured communication like in-person, spoken human conversations.
Nothing is stopping you from adding back all your binds, listens, SYNs, and ACKs to a protocol that doesn't need them. But it's a conversational code smell if you do.
Dear sowbug - apparently you live in a place where it is fine to send a message and it does not matter if the recipient is ready to receive it or not. Good for you.
The solution here would be for Microsoft to add a "hello will be ignored" option to Teams so I can just check that and have it look like Teams is saying back to them " please write more then just hello "
It does not work that way in my place. You write "hello" and if there is no immediate "hello" back, then you leave this aside until there is. There is no staring at anything.
The phone is the last but one "urgency" level. It means that if someone calls me on the phone it is really urgent. I would interrupt a lot of things, including a presentation, if I get a call.
If this is to say something minor I will block that person, or never pick up their call again.
I see, however, that you're rudely just communicating here without telling people hello first, and waiting for a reply to know they're available to converse.
It's a feeler (IMO way more descriptive than "doorknob") that lets you bail if you don't want to talk. Without it you may feel obligated to listen or have to be slightly rude. With it you have a range of options like "swamped on this project, catch up with you later" or such depending on circumstances to avoid straining a relationship.
In async communication it's unnecessary though, people might do it by inertia.
I don’t mind people saying hello, but also would prefer they then go ahead and state their need. I don’t always respond right away, and often times by the time I get around to answering the need is gone or the person is unavailable. I definitely don’t mind interrupting my work flow, especially to route somebody to the actual correct person who can help them with their problem, but I don’t like the expectation of a synchronous conversation, so a “hello” with nothing else will usually fall to the bottom of my list of actual concrete problems to address for that minute/hour/day.
I had colleague that was 10x developer but 0/10 communicator, if he didn't receive separate first message with "Hi, how is it going?" without me waiting for his answer before requesting something, he wouldn't reply.
It was such a dead end for getting things done (he was productive on his things, but blocker for everybody else.
I once worked with someone who got visibly frustrated when people didn't stop in the hallways to listen to her lengthy response to the phatic "how are you?" expression. She treated it as a genuine question.
Completely agree. I think it's polite to greet others properly but it's rude to wait for a reply before moving the conversation forward. So I just write my greetings and then write what I need to say on the following lines, old school letter style. Works really well in my experience.
The argument might be made, that this is a problem with many (most?) ticket management systems.
How difficult would it be to design a mechanism that facilitates humans being nice to each other, rather than making humans emulate emotionless robots?
Even for other reasons, why should a comment automatically reopen a ticket? Maybe you just found some addtional details you want to record for future reference but which don't need any additional action right now.
Thank you for the nohello.net thing, I am usually pretty awkward when it comes to starting conversations and but I guess I never paid attention to why that was the case. The discussion on this thread clears out the impression I had that it is usually rude to directly jumping to the question/task. I got my queue! :)
I think the author was referring to this in the context of improv, not normal conversation. It's bad to do in improv because it contributes nothing to the sketch - it's lazy and puts the entire effort onto the other person. It's much easier to riff off any kind of declarative statement or directed question. For example, "Dude this dog birthday is the weirdest party ever." or "So are you going to forgive my mom for dinner?" gives the other person an immediate context and hook to work with. Keegan-Michael Key explained this very well in a video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coZARWbdNls
When I was younger and more pretentious I used to get annoyed at friends for answering "what's up?" with "nothing much" because in my head by asking that I was obviously fishing for conversation material so you should just bring up something that we can talk about.
Something that happened recently or something that you heard about or something you remembered or something you are looking forward to, just... anything.
It seems some people might be more comfortable sitting in silence and so they don't feel the need to talk about _anything_ as a way to break it. Maybe it's an introvert/extrovert thing.
I used to be that way too. Now I see that there are depths there that I didn't see. I was blind to my blindness. I try to keep my cool now. Reply with something soft and cool.
Huh. I’m glad this is not a thing in my circles. Being direct and exposing some vulnerability seems to work great for us.
I known its just a custom that can’t be analyzed too deeply, but what you describe sounds so timid and shy from the outside.
Rightly or wrongly (probably wrongly), if I picked up that someone was doing this, I’d assume they need a lot of special handling and ceremony to feel comfortable. It would take a lot for me to want to bother.
> "What's up?" is nearly universally a way to prompt someone to ask you that question back, so you can tell them about the thing you really want to say without it seeming sudden or forced.
Maybe in the United States, but I would hardly call it universal.
"What's up?" is the knock. They could lead with whatever they really want to ask you or push at you, whether it's telling you about their vacation to Ireland or asking you if they can hold a thousand this month, but instead they've given you the opportunity to not respond, or to say "Hey, really busy; talk later?" :)
I mostly agree, and think that In addiction to what you said “what’s up” is basically like pinging someone to see if they are available so that some additional reason planning can occur
> “… so you can tell them about the thing you really want to say without it seeming sudden or forced.”
Yes. And I find myself using this pattern when I want to talk (heck, I started the conversation, so I have something in my mind), but I’m not sure if it’s a convenient time.
If my asking “What’s up” unlocks a conversation, then maybe it’s not a good time to talk about what I was thinking.
While I certainly hate the "what's up" question, questions post kids with friends are related to their kids, jobs, relationship issues and pop culture video games questions.
Honestly, I've had a hard time turning these into interesting discussions. It amounts to, "no time to really reflect. Here are my mundane joys and traumas. Okay, back to the pressing issues at hand..."
Its a greeting that confirms a certain level of intamacy. You don't have to answer with anything more than the same question. Like a modern "how do you do".
I think you could choose many other two properties and they would still make sense.
We all know it's simplification and it's easy to read so it looks intelligent, albeit incomplete.
For example I make 2x2 matrix of growing roses where axis are: amount of water and amount of sunlight, seems reasonable but we know that there are many other variables at play: soil, atmosphere, solar cycle, temperature, fungal growth etc.
I could make NxM matrix of all known variables, but it would be quite intimidating.
Talking to someone who will finish their piece no matter what is the most annoying thing in the world when the speaker doesn’t keep things brief. Interruption, to an extent, necessary for interacting with those individuals who may not interrupt but who also can’t stop talking to let the other sure get a word in
I came here to say this. The similarity was so striking it was jarring. Both really great articles. Might both be explaining the ~same thing in different terms.
I enjoyed this read. I'm typically an interviewer in conversations and assumed that was the less abrasive way to be. Just the other day though, I realized that it's probably preferable for a conversation partner to be given the option to comment on an inviting declaration than to be forced to answer a question.
True. A date with an interviewer can be flattering if they are engaged in your answers, but interviewing is also a subtle way to control the flow of information and remain private.
A good read, thanks. I like the description of take/give sides and it's well portrayed. I wondered if there's any take home message here for salvaging a give-take conversation.
I'd crudely deduct that being takers/givers in a conversation may be a function of cultural, linguistic, social, and intellectual dimensions coupled with personal, emotional, and ambient states a person is in.
As such there's really very little just one party can do to have a better conversation flowing on their own. So apart from affordance, I think participation seems to also be a key factor and can be seen as "push or pull or slide" aspect of that doorknob.
For me, I grew up a Taker. I'm not sure if this was a cultural thing (my parents are takers), a regional thing (western NY), or a me-being-an-unaware-dork thing (I was).
But now I find myself surrounded by Givers. I'm not sure if this is a cultural thing (SF tech scene), a regional thing (west coast), or a my-social-circle thing.
So I had to learn to be a giver to make any friends. What's interesting is that my old friends are mostly Takers. I imagine this was a selection bias: givers got bored of talking to me quickly! I get together with some old friends from college once or twice a year and every time it's a bit jarring for the first hour as I have to switch to all-take mode.
Anyway, the point being that I think you can learn to switch, and to blend between the two modes. In fact, I think being able to do so is generally good and helpful.
I think it's very much a west-coast / upper-middle-class liberal thing. I noticed it dramatically when I moved to the west coast (Seattle, in my case).
People think it's being polite and decent but to me it just seems boring.
Anecdotally I think 'taker'-ness is associated with immigrant cultures (Jewish and Italian come to mind, but I think it includes others also).
I wouldn't say the traits are universal, as in someone is always a giver or someone is always a taker, but rather it depends heavily on context. For example, I've noticed I'm mostly a giver when I'm talking to my parents, because I'm very interested in hearing what they have to say while they're still around, whereas I'm often a taker around my friends. The answer to your question then would be to be flexible and match your conversation partner. If you find your partner to be a giver, you too can try to give to meet them halfway, similarly for the other option.
I think the metaphor of doorknobs doesn't really capture what it is that motivates people to converse. To my mind's eye, an door that's ajar is more compelling since it provides a glimpse of myriad untold imaginings that may lie within. Ideally, the not-yet-engaged conversant might be tempted to peek behind this door to speak to something personally of interest to them, regardless of what was said by whomever opened it. I think the trick is to suggest several possible openings such that one manages to suck them in.
A topic I find never fails to engage is a recent movie or book, liked or hated. Why so? Did the techniques of the author or director or cast or production resonate or miss the mark? how would they have changed the plot, the actors, the setting, or the ending? How did this story compare to others they liked more? And so on…
There's nothing magic about movies or books, but everyone has opinions about storytelling and usually feels free to discuss it, since involvement and criticism are pretty much the purpose of fiction in the first place. That's one open door that will usually entice a room of strangers to break the silence.
> We think people want to hear about exciting stuff we did without them (“I went to Budapest!”) when they actually are happier talking about mundane stuff we did together (“Remember when we got stuck in traffic driving to DC?”)
True, if someone in the conversation wasn't at that event, it's very hard for them to care, unless there's a punchline or its somehow actually related to them...
As a teenager I noticed some people used it to enforce in-group status. If you were there, you can talk to them, if you weren't, go talk to someone else.
Personally, I want to hear about exciting stuff that my friend did and tell them about the exciting stuff that happened to me (though not much of that has happened recently.. can just stay relatively quiet).
This article has a bit more information and terminology.
There used to be advice around "progressive disclosure" in conversation. You say something e.g. very-slightly-risky to disclose, while also asking e.g. a less-risky-to-answer question. The other person then has a choice of gradient toward more or less disclosure or inquiry, and whether to answer or ask more.
I've recently learned that I have Avoidant Personality Disorder. I spend most of a conversation looking for ways to end it quickly before I make some sort of social faux pas that I'll obsess about for the rest of my life. (I still replay moments from 30 years ago in my head. Like I said, it's a disorder). The better a conversation is going, the faster I want it to end. Any exit I see, I take it.
I wish! At least I know now my type of crazy isn't unique. That actually helps a lot and lets me recognize when I'm being that way and why. Thanks for asking!
Second that!
I took a while to grasp the concept of "social doorknobs" while reading this text. I think it boils down to something people can use to open up conversational pathways and keep the conversation flowing.
While reading this, I kept drawing parallels to how I like to teach. (I'm not a professional teacher, but I volunteer at a makerspace and nothing is more fun than watching someone grasp a new concept and use it to actually make something.)
I tend to think that, in general, there's very little new under the sun, so most students are already equipped with analogies that will help them understand what I'm teaching. That is, if I can just figure out what they're familiar with and draw the appropriate parallels.
Teaching, then, becomes an exercise in learning my student and trying to express analogies that they can grab onto. Which means sometimes throwing out a slow-ball so they have an easy hit, and seeing which metaphor they use to hit it with, which then gives me some information about how to proceed.
Great read. The pandemic forced my close friends to go from in person drinks to zooms but then quickly transitioned to async voice messages. The by product of this is everyone gets a chance to be a giver and taker without having take the spotlight immediately. Sometimes our conversations last weeks as someone comes in and reignites debate after bringing a new point. It’s all async. Curious is anyone else has found similar success with voice messaging as a medium.
When I was a little kid, I remember my dad and uncle would mail cassette tapes back and forth, instead of writing letters.
Dad would gleefully find one in the mail, unwrap it, open a beer, and sit down with his headphones on and notepad in hand. Once in a while he'd actually pause the playback while jotting notes, but mostly the things he wanted to respond to only needed a scribbled word or two as a prompt for later.
Having finished the tape, he'd walk around for a minute to collect his thoughts, grab a second beer but not open it, rewind the tape, press Record, wait a count of 5 for the leader to be past the record head, then crack that beer right into the microphone -- every tape started with that sound -- and begin to hold forth.
Voice messages between more than 2 people? Oh interesting.
I do this with a friend in England that I met and became ultra fast friends with years ago. We traveled Asia together for 2 months. Haven't seen him in years and honestly might not again! But we are buds for life and keep in touch via async voice messages. The other day I sent him a short one asking a relatively intimate question and received a reply with an 18min message. Receiving it felt like Christmas.
Really interesting. I've always wished there was a formula to be better at conversations. I've never been good at it! I've tried to find books but the ones I've found come off as manipulative, not as a cure for social awkwardness! Doorknobs are a great mental model!
I had a hard time remembering which is which until I started to mentally append “stage” to it. Stage giver, stage taker - taking the stage, giving the stage.
The author, given the context of improv, seems to have been implicitly using that as the metaphor the entire time but it didn’t stick to me until I thought about it more.
Yes. And the author provides both a cite for an academic publication as well as one from popular media. (And it's not exactly new either - the paper was published in 97).
This provides a great mental model to build awareness / be more sensitive for the social cues during a conversation.
> There is no known cure for egocentrism; the condition appears to be congenital.
Which is why I can't see why this is suggested as an independent issue that should simply be accepted, without additional reference. The lack of doorknobs, if you will.
Chastising givers who resent takers, the author says it's "..easy to forget how lovely it feels when you don’t want the spotlight and a taker lets you recline on the mezzanine while they fill the stage."
As a giver, I'd usually rather not be stuck in the "conversation" (more like, speech) that the taker is dominating.
The taker is probably used to talking to other takers, where each person taking time to say stuff is normal. Talking to a giver, using this terminology, can be really disorienting: it's like trying to make conversation with a person who's not participating and is just being polite.
Sometimes it’s unavoidable though. During various social obligations which require your presence it can be nice to have takers around to keep things going.
> It turns out that we like people the best when they respond to us the fastest––so fast (mere milliseconds!) that they must be formulating their reply long before we finish our turn.
This might be true; but looking into the linked study, it appears to be on Dartmouth students. This claim at least maybe culturally dependent.
There is this quip that psychology is really the study of freshman students. Probably because (at least where I live) students are required to participate in a number of psychological studies in their first year.
This is so completely off topic, but if the idea of an improv musical about Spiderman's dating life sounds up your alley, you should check out this episode of Off Book: The Improvised Musical. The premise is Spiderman + MJ in couples therapy, and it's phenomenal.
Logistically, how does the instrumental part of the music get improvised on the spot in a way that the actors can sing along? Do they have preexisting music determined that the actors can improvise lyrics to? Or do they just sing without musical backing and then music gets recorded to match it later?
In this particular podcast, they have a three-piece band they work with every episode (guitar, drums and piano). The music is improvised just like the singing. Usually either the piano or guitar will start, the other two will join in. And then they follow each other.
They definitely rely on musical tropes they all know, for example "rock song" or "broadway song". But overall, it's a combination of them all being insanely talented, having worked together a lot, and once in a while cue-ing each other.
Did you ever see the David Letterman show? Paul Schaffer, the keyboardist and bandleader on the show is a great example of that. Before Letterman, he played piano on Saturday Night Live.
Paul was an improviser, musically and comedically. Some word or concept Dave was riffing on would catch something in Paul and out would come related (often hilarious) music. On SNL, he and Bill Murray did a great lounge pianist/singer duo, playing off one another and obviously not entirely rehearsed.
I'll let you dig for links to that stuff. The digging is probably more fun than some presented example in this case.
Saw musical improve live in the 1990s. One keyboardist live to accompany. Not a musician so I can't say about expected chord changes vs. transposition, etc.
I think good conversation is lot about confidence of people involved. I had terrible conversations (or at least their attempts) where people threw at me questions so quickly I haven't had chance to plant some doorknobs.
Many of encounters where I had to resist their "and you?" questions, as I saw an opportunity to expand on what they were saying.
Which I find weird because then I am completely terrible at group conversations (as there is already taker & giver, so I just go to role of listener)
> Conversational affordances are things like digressions and confessions and bold claims that beg for a rejoinder.
Isn't that just giving? I mean, sure, I guess you can say "That movie sucked and anybody who liked it can fight me!" and then not give a shit about what anyone else says which probably isn't giving, but putting that out there and watching for who responds to what and then enticing them with more of that is the essence of giving (and conversation).
TFA uses "giving" and "taking" in an idiosyncratic way. Specifically, in terms of giving/taking the stage. That's the purpose of the story about improv at the top.
Yeah. This was the hardest thing for me to wrap my head around while reading. Even after the terms were put in context, it was Hard Work to continue forcing them into my mind.
Eventually I just gave up on that and realized that the rest of the point was thoroughly useful without those terms.
I was confused for a few sentences when the giver/taker terms were used without explicit definition. I assumed they were used to denote information givers/takers but the definition is more like spotlight giver/takers
I like this definition of give (the spotlight) vs take (the spotlight). This works in an improv setting where all participants have something to say.
I have trouble with the other scenario -- possibly more common -- where the participants are reluctant to say much. I used to define these as takers ... they take energy from the giver (the initiator of the conversation); the giver needs to constantly re-up the energy.
Excellent article! Feel like Ive had a few of these realizations the hard way (i used to often, still sometimes do, just text someone a Q without offering something at the same time). Wish I had learned these lessons earlier. The point how different 1on1 and group conversations are is a great one, without someone there being open to get ridiculed noone talks.
Great article! I've personally been pretty self aware with how often I "create doorknobs" in conversations, though I like to think of it in terms of "passing the ball" in soccer or basketball. If you do all the passing and never get the ball passed to you, the "game" of conversation is no fun -and it should be fun!
Givers think that conversations unfold as a series of invitations, while takers think conversations unfold as a series of declarations. When giver meets giver or taker meets taker, all is well. However, when giver meets taker, giver gives and taker takes, and giver gets resentful.
I think good conversations require taking turns in the giving receiving roles. This is, I believe a prerequisite for a good friendship.
And for good friends the turns could be weeks long rather than minutes. As you have proven to each other you care about each overs life already, so it can adjust to circumstances.
I don't think that correspondance really works. For one, it is a bit of a conflation between introversion/extroversion and being outspoken vs being quiet, where what *version you are is more about natural proclivities. That is to say, one can be fine with, and quite good at, something they don't enjoy (and vice versa - there are many people who really enjoy constant social interaction but are quite bad at it!).
But even within outspoken/quiet, you can easily see those attributes in different takers and givers. For instance, a circumstance where someone is constantly asking questions, and getting short, blunt answers seems like an outspoken giver overpowering a quiet taker. On the other side, someone who blabs incessantly while the other party meekly subsides to just asking questions occasionally is an outspoken taker, taking the stage and never letting go of it.
> “What’s up?” is one of the most dreadful texts to get; it’s short for “Hello, I’d like you to entertain me now.”
The typical response to "What's up?" from myself and, uh, nearly everyone I know, is some variation on
"Not much! What's up with you?" or
"[trivial recent happening, quickly related] So, what's been going on with you?"
...and that's because "What's up?" is nearly universally a way to prompt someone to ask you that question back, so you can tell them about the thing you really want to say without it seeming sudden or forced.