4.12Interpersonal Communication Skills💬

I came to realize that conversational competence might be the single most overlooked skill we fail to teach. Kids spend hours each day engaging with ideas and each other through screens but rarely do they have an opportunity to hone their interpersonal communication skills. Many of you have already heard a lot of advice on this, things like look the person in the eye, think of interesting things, topics to discuss in advance, look, nod, and smile to show that you’re paying attention, repeat back what you just heard or summarize it. So I want you to forget all of that. It is crap. Use open-ended questions. In this case take a cue from journalists, start your questions with who what where when why or how. Try asking them things like “what was that like”, “how did that feel”, because then they might have to stop for a moment and think about it and you're going to get a much more interesting response. One more rule and it’s this one, be brief. A good conversation is like a miniskirt; short enough to retain interest, but long enough to cover the subject. 我开始意识到：交流能力，可能是最被我们忽视的、没有好好教授的技能。孩子每天花费数小时来通过屏幕去接触创意以及其他的伙伴，但很少有机会去磨炼自己的人际交往技能。 你们中间很多人肯定已经听过无数建议，比如看着对方的眼睛；提前想好有趣的话题；对视、点头并且微笑，以此来表明你的注意力在对方身上；重复你刚才听到的，或者做总结。我想让你们忘掉所有这些，这全都是胡扯。 问开放式的问题。关于这一点，请参考记者采访的提问方式。以“谁”、“什么”、“何时”、“何地”、“为什么”或“如何”开始提问。试着这样问他们：“那是什么样子？”“你当时感觉如何？” 因为这样一来，对方可能需要停下来想一想，而你会得到更有意思的回答。 最后一条，第十条：简明扼要。好的交谈就像是条恰到好处的迷你裙；足够短，能够吸引人，又足够长，能够包纳（盖住）主体。