ELDER AS CONVERSATION

Conversations are all there is, whether in person or by cell, whether occurring in brick and mortar or on screen, whether by voice or words. 

Conversations are a hypernym, a word with a broad meaning that more specific words fall under, a superordinate. For example, color is a hypernym of red. Conversations are the ultimate human hypernym.

Conversations are the sine qua non of what determines a relationship, a company, or a culture.

Upon close examination, you always have a conversation happening in your head. So pay attention; the conversation is always going on.

You, them, it’s all a conversation up and down the line.

Conversations are how things get done. Planning, problem-solving, reporting, managing, leading, coaching, or staying current all happen through conversations.

Then add into the mix your internal conversations, that jumble of enumerable discussions in your head that provide assessments, judgments, and critiques of who you are and who they are.

The best model to explore this conversation domain is the “network” model. Every node in the network is considered a conversation – you, your relationships, your organization, your various cohorts, your industry, and even the nation. And in nearly all ways, bidirectional—a massive number of conversations, going and coming.

In a network, every node, near or far, is somehow linked. Conversations feed into other ones, which in turn feed into other ones—the six-degree “Kevin Bacon” phenomenon.