Planning for Pleasant Conversations

The end of the year is the time for lots of idealized thinking about positive conversations—maybe memories of previous ones around a holiday table, planned ones with family and friends in front of a fire, or never to happen ones during which acrimoniously divorced parents reconcile.

Pleasant in-person conversations, the sort where everyone participates and says positive things to each other, are more likely when:

• Everyone can maintain the personal spaces from others they desire in particular situations—so chairs can be shifted slightly or sofas are long enough (and plentiful enough) so people have a real choice about how close to others they sit. Just as we are stressed by being too close to others, we get stressed when we are further from whomever we are talking to than we’d like, another reason that flexible distance seating options are a good idea.

• To get everyone involved, the ability to make ready eye contact is important—so your elementary school teacher was right about forming classroom chairs into a circle.A round table can work well also, but they can be hard to fit in many rooms.  A rectangular table where the chairs from the head and foot of the table are moved to its sides can do the trick here.  A square table or seat configuration can encourage the same sorts of conversations as round ones, if the more powerful, conversation dominating people are scattered around its sides, not all aligned on one side or on two sides that face each other. If chairs are arranged to boost eye contact, something in/near the middle of the circle created, such as a fish tank or large plant or sculpture, etc., to which people can gracefully divert their eyes without offending their conversation partners when an eye contact break is in order, is a good idea (and even the most cheerful, upbeat discussion calls for an eye contact break every so often). When our seats are at right angles to each other, we’re more likely to talk and form relationships with each other, in part, potentially because eye contact can be so easily managed in this configuration.
• Everyone participating in a conversation is sitting on seats whose legs are about the same length and no participants should be seated on the floor unless all are. When we’re looking up at someone while we talk to them they seem more adult than we are, more powerful, experienced, etc., than we are, which can distort how comments are received, for example. When we make eye contact without looking up or down, the person we’re making eye contact with seems more trustworthy.
• Furniture between us, such as tabletops, increases our psychological distance from each other, which can be good or bad depending on the situation.
• Conversing pairs (or more) who want privacy really get it (not via unlikely-to-ever-work soundproofing curtains, for instance, but via real walls and doors.
• Everyone can see “project-relevant” material, such as the classic movie. We are more apt to talk to people we make eye contact with, so for that movie watching (unless a running dialogue is planned), can work best in a sort of modified classroom chair arrangement in which everyone can see the screen, but can’t really lock eyes with others.
• The space is biophilically designed, as discussed in these articles (for example, there are plants and natural materials around along with lots of natural light).

• Walls are warm colours (but not red).
• Curving lines abound in two dimensions (say in upholstery fabrics) and in three (for example, the shape of the back of a sofa, or the edge detail of a cushion).
• The lighting is definitely warmer and slightly dimmer than in an office space, etc.
• The space smells like lavender (we’re likely to be more trusting then) as well as clean (when it does we’re more likely to be fair and generous).
• We sit on a cushion of some sort—even a soft pad an inch or so deep can really pay off, improving how well we get along with others.

For information on how to improve electronic, Zoom-like conversations, read this article and also put in “zoom” in our search bar top right.