Good conversations take time and attention. How to have better ones?

Celeste Headlee has spent her adult life talking. But she says she was terrible at talking to people when she was younger.

Here are her biggest pieces of advice:

Be Present: People think that "being present" means not looking at your email or texting during the conversation. It also means giving people your entire attention and not thinking about what you're up to later that day. Really focus.

Go with the flow of the conversation: It's easy to stop listening when you're planning what you're going to say next. Think of listening like a river. We dam it up all the time when we stop listening in order to think about what it is that we're going to say next. As soon as those thoughts come into your brain, you need to let them go out of your brain and then return back to the conversation.

Don't pontificate: Stop lecturing. It might make you feel good, but it only makes you feel good for a very short span of time. And it definitely doesn't make the other person feel good.

Ask open-ended conversations: Yes or no questions don't lead the conversation very far. For example, rather than asking, "Are you sitting down?" You might try, "What kind of chair do you like to sit in?"

Stay out of the weeds: If you're getting too many details, it can be easy to lose focus on the big picture. Nobody cares about the exact date or somebody's name or the exact movie you were watching.

If you don't know something, say it: Very few people are willing to admit this, but it's OK not to know something.

Be brief: People repeat themselves oftentimes because they think they're drilling information into somebody's head, but that's not really how conversations work. Studies show that our attention spans are short and getting shorter.

Listen: The other steps are also about listening. But this deserves its own point. Listening is hard. It requires energy and focus. It's also essential — if you're not listening, then you're not really having a conversation.

And the only way forward, says Headlee, is to start talking to each other. In We Need to Talk, she outlines the strategies that have made her a better conversationalist—and offers simple tools that can improve anyone’s communication. For example: 

• BE THERE OR GO ELSEWHERE. Human beings are incapable of multitasking, and this is especially true of tasks that involve language. Think you can type up a few emails while on a business call, or hold a conversation with your child while texting your spouse? Think again.
• CHECK YOUR BIAS. The belief that your intelligence protects you from erroneous assumptions can end up making you more vulnerable to them. We all have blind spots that affect the way we view others. Check your bias before you judge someone else.
• HIDE YOUR PHONE. Don’t just put down your phone, put it away. New research suggests that the mere presence of a cell phone can negatively impact the quality of a conversation.

Whether you’re struggling to communicate with your kid’s teacher at school, an employee at work, or the people you love the most—Headlee offers smart strategies that can help us all have conversations that matter.

That's pretty useful, ashish