Seizing conversations

Today I lunched with a few colleges of mine and it turned out to be a refreshing experience. It is truly marvelous what's possible with radiating your personal “aura”. You can overrule people with it verbally, if it's strong enough. This is the remarkable thing; I am not quite one who chatters a lot. But once my aura "wins" other people know nothing to say anymore. They take over my silence. Well, then I can talk.

This sure is tricky business because if you do this wrong people get irritated. The goal is having a good and enjoyable conversation. The people with whom I talk can talk, as long as they keep referring to my aura. The interesting thing is, when this works out well, and I become somewhat of the talk-show-host of the conversation, I seem to know intuitively who needs to talk and who has talked enough (and needs to shut up).

One guy is always being a bit of a jerk in conversations. When he's talking he starts a whole story, and he also tends to be the only one laughing about his own jokes. Well. Not today. Not with me around. I subtly managed to interrupt him by asking a question, thereby having the possibility to direct the “group-energy” towards someone else who desparately wanted to say some things. Not that the person had anything profound to say, but the whole dynamic of the normal group structure (these people know each other very well, and have certain conversational habits) turned around.

So the shutting off one and giving room to another really was a pretty experience. I guess they liked it too, but the important point is that of control. To be in charge of a conversation is exhilarating but difficult. It's tempting to seize all attention, but do that a few times and people start getting irritated; Not wanting to listen to you anymore. It's much more interesting to be in charge without anyone noticing. You don't even have to say very much, just at the right moments.

On the other hand, I hear you asking: how can you be sure of this kind “control”? Well, that's easy. By being able to subtly seize a conversation, with everyone wondering how you do it.