Thanks for continuing the conversation. A conversation without an agenda is a bit like a boat without a rudder. It circles around endlessly and doesn’t go anywhere.

It’s the hidden agendas that intrigue me the most. When engaged in dialogue, I often ask myself,”where’s this conversation heading?”. It’s like a game where the objective is to understand the agenda, and then understand how the conversation is being navigated towards fulfilling that agenda.

Most revealing is the number of times I’m in conversation with someone who still thinks their agenda is hidden, long after it slipped out.

Why hide it? Why not just be upfront – with honesty, transparency and respect?

Best to you, Cat.

Robin

I find the ‘concern’ about agendas interesting … each one of us has had an agenda in participating in this conversation … whether it’s as straight-forward as participating in an interesting conversation or something more ‘outcome’ orientated like increasing our profile, engaging with new people … whatever it may be. To ‘mind-read’ and suggest that any agenda may hijack the conversation is flawed … everyone who has participated in this conversation has enjoyed the dialogue … regardless of the ‘agendas’ each of us have brought with us. In fact, those agendas which are so concerned about actually drive our individual contributions … and therefore contribute to the ‘enrichment’ we experience.

So I’m with Luke – some of the best conversations I’ve had with people online have been as a direct result of ‘an agenda’ – an announcement, promotion or deliberate prod …

For me therefore, few rules (other than our standard, human rules of respect) … and, if you don’t like the conversation you don’t need to participate … don’t make those who are participating wrong.

Oh … and continue the conversation ….

Cat

Love your input, Luke. The examples you give are very useful. So much of a conversation’s power seems to come down to mutual value.

We came.

We conversed i.e. took turns to forward ideas, acknowledge, respond and build.

We departed enriched in some way.

It gets murky when agendas hijack the free-form nature of a flowing conversation. Or when comments are taken personally. Or when ‘debate’ gets confused with ‘attack’.

This ‘safe exchange’ can be hard to pick. Just when you thought it was safe to pose something really different and edgy into the conversation, you hear the crack of the thin ice moments before the freezing bath.

Meaningful dialogue is my kind of conversation, Luke. Something I enjoy very much about our exchanges.

Best, Robin

Fab discussion on here as usual and always great contribution and input from everyone.

I’d like to address your question of “But what does that look like? Is it really a conversation – an exchange of information and ideas, or just another euphemism for self-serving data stream?”

This is a very good question. Why does there have to be a hard and fast rule though? Without getting bogged down with format and semantics (you know how I get hung up as a wordsmith) I’d like to give an example of where real online conversations are taking place – independent filmmaking, writing, screenwriting, production.

These areas are awash with passionate conversations at the moment. There’s a real buzz about the SM airwaves. Filmmakers are very vocal about their industry; as are all the key creative elements associated with it. On Twitter, for example, there’s Scriptchat, Writechat and a myriad other hash-tagged conversational movements.

What’s key about these arenas, and to me, their success in achieving real two-way, passionate conversations, is that, rather than play the SM roulette table and hope that something kicks off; they are pre-determined, scheduled and people make a point of being online to engage and debate.

It’s very often a hit or miss affair when posting, tweeting or publishing as to whether it’s going to spark up something. I’m seeing and taking part in passionate, heated, controversial and highly informative, motivating conversations with filmmakers online.

I’d add here, that, in order to get a really good conversation going, there has to be diversity of thinking. For example, if we all start agreeing with each other then that quickly snuffs out the desire to keep it going. I don’t want to be in situations where everyone’s agreeing or pretty much coming up with variations of the same theme.

If I’m discussing publishing, writing, screenplays etc you can guarantee that there’ll be people strong enough to rise above peer pressure. Peer pressure online is fear in another guise. It takes great strength of character to truly engage and even greater strength of character to begin to listen and maybe, just, maybe, there are things we don’t want to hear. In those circumstances, conversations can fizzle.

I like debate in my online conversations. I like passion. I like people who will throw a curve ball.

Finally, I see nothing wrong with an announcement or notice being a catalyst to conversation. There are many times when we/I have ended up in conversations I didn’t see coming, simply by tweeting out an update. There’s also a great deal of fragmentation in the conversations we have. Something may start on Twitter, spill over to Tumblr and end up with several Skypes and emails. The conversations are, to the viewer, disjointed. But, in actual fact, pull the pieces together and you get the bigger picture.

I’m not big on rules. In short; I have no idea what a conversation looks like; I just know when I’m having one!

A commercial conversation that has a transparent agenda just seems like business as usual.

A social conversation that is an interesting and enjoyable exchange of ideas and opinions seems like good fun.

It’s the mix of the two that I’m nervous about.

What of the hidden agenda of the networker, marketer or even proselytizer, who skilfully guides the conversation to the very familiar endpoint? Still a conversation. Probably better than most. I just get a little uncomfortable when conversations become con-versations. You?

Thanks for weighing in, my friend.

Best, Robin

As we’ve discussed in the past, a business conversation that uses a social context to prosecute its aims kind of smells wrong – especially if the whole scenario is planned in advance. If people want to talk business, I’m with you – let’s ask a pertinent question like “What’s the budget?”.

I would be interested in whether or not you think there are any key differences between the business conversation and the social conversation – especially as online, people seem to continually try to mash the two together,

Best, Robin

In your opinion, is there a difference between conversations online and offline, or are they basically the same?

Best to you, Robin

Does the description of conversation that you offer change in anyway if the purpose of the interaction changes?

For example, in sales and marketing, many ‘conversations’ have the purpose of persuasion/conversion i.e. the conversation becomes conversuasion.

Always great to get your input, Brad.

Best, Robin

More people are willing to cross-comment and build on each other’s thoughts and ideas.

To me, the comments ARE the blog post. The more people interact and converse, the more stimulating and rich the post content.

In your opinion, why do you think people generally tend not to respond to each other’s comments? Is there an unspoken conversation etiquette?

Thanks for the chat this morning (last night ).

Best, Robin

You make a great point about ‘real engagement’ being a marker of good conversation.

Just thinking about engagement being ‘active listening’ and ‘active contribution’, who in your opinion would demonstrate these qualities online?

Great to connect with you.

Best, Robin

It’s not so much genuine interaction as it is one person’s comments bringing to someone else’s mind another thought that they then share.

There isn’t so much a personal interaction as there is a comparing of perspectives. Not to say that’s bad. It gets each of us to exercise our minds as we see perspectives we hadn’t considered before.

As Cat pointed out, listening to each other is crucial to have anything close to a conversation. Otherwise it’s just a bunch of people on competing soapboxes.

I wrote about this last week. There’s tons of conversation going on ‘ABOUT’ – but this needs to be separated from conversation WITH, which is a very small percentage.

Even consider most of our comments that we get – they will mostly be people commenting, we respond, they respond. Seldom do people respond to other comments.

So right on that comment wall you have conversation ABOUT, even though there are people right there with whom they can have a conversation WITH.

I think a great conversation requires FOCUS. The kind of focus that is hard to reach when you have more than 12 people pitching in. Hey, more people find it hard with 3.