THE RUB
I've had some enjoyable conversations around politics in the last week, and it had nothing to do with the election. Over the last decade, I've had countless political conversations that have run aground. I believed the stakes were high and was passionate about my beliefs.
I approached these conversations feeling a need to persuade the other person to my thinking, but recently I’ve been able to approach them from a more genuinely curious perspective.
I’ve been challenging myself to explore deeper conversations with others. Politics was an easy starting topic because everyone was already talking about the news (okay, I guess it did have a little something to do with the elections). I avoided the shallow waters of my strong biases where I want to know who and what you voted for, and headed into the deeper sea of election experiences and values around the act of voting.
What was their first election? Did they ever do a mock election before they were old enough to vote? What did their parents and family demonstrate to them about voting? How do they prepare to vote? Much richer and more enjoyable.
THE FRAMEWORK
This all started because I got curious about the ancient navigational skill of measuring the depth of water with a sounding line. It's not the open sea that causes most shipwrecks. It's the shallow ground below the surface. A sounding line is a rope with a lead weight at one end and markers tied at determined lengths, usually in fathoms (6 feet).
Sailors throw the line out and feel for when it hits the bottom, look at the closest marking, and call out the depth. Samuel Clemens’ pen name was taken from the riverboat call of “Mark Twain” — two fathoms deep which is the minimally safe depth. It’s a better pseudonym than Twelve Feet.
The bottom of the lead weight was hollowed out and would have tallow inserted, so that some of the sea floor would stick to it which also helped determine a ship’s position. That image makes me want to understand what values and beliefs sit at the bottom of our own depths.
What makes this framework stick for me is that ships have to slow down to take the measurement.
THE PRACTICE
Visualizing a sounding line during a conversation helps me turn down my judgment and crank up my curiosity. Not only did it help with the political conversations, but over the weekend, I learned some things about a few running friends I rarely see.
One used to be a librarian with a wide variety of experiences from a school, to a public library, to a private collection. Another got into running because he was a biker and wanted to compete in triathlons. He hated running at first, but grew to love the sport more than biking.
These were easy depths to uncover. Fascinating friends who are good storytellers. But would this approach work with an oversharing conversation hog. I knew the perfect candidate.
I’ve gotten good over the years at interrupting run-on talkers, but I usually use that skill to shut it down and exit the conversation. Instead of departing I threw out a sounding line. What was a challenge you had in college? Oh wow, this person had dropped out of college multiple times. When they would get stuck on a litany of irrelevant details, I’d prompt a new depth. How did you explain that to your friends and family?
I walked away without ever looking for the exit I’d come prepared to use.
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