Are You Conversationally Tone-Deaf?

By Connie Reece

At church recently my friend's two-year-old joined in the congregational singing with gusto. The toddler mangled the words, of course, and could not carry a tune in the proverbial bucket; but she clapped her chubby little hands in delight while "making a joyful noise to the Lord."

And noisy, she was. The child sang loudly enough that those around her got tickled, and her father tried to shush her. Though she warbled off-key, I have a feeling heaven enjoyed her musical tribute, even while it made some parishioners a bit nervous.

As a musician with almost-perfect pitch, I've worked with a number of supposedly tone-deaf people. Some are not really tone-deaf at all; they just need practice matching pitches. Others truly are incapable of carrying a tune no matter how much you work with them; they do not hear different frequencies in a way that allows them to reproduce musical tones.

I've noticed the same tendency in conversation: some people are naturally gifted at it; others gradually acquire the skills that allow them to engage in enjoyable and effective back-and-forth exchanges; while others seem genetically incapable of picking up verbal or written cues that keep the conversation flowing.

What constitutes conversational tone deafness?

1. Insisting on one-way communication in a conversational medium.

This is amplified by the number of tools that allow auto-posting of content across channels. Often I see the same message posted on Facebook, Twitter and Plurk, for example, and perhaps identi.ca and ping.fm as well. Outside of noticing duplicate messages, it's a dead giveaway when a status update on another network refers to someone's Twitter user name.

Sometimes it's harder to decipher that a microblogging post is really a broadcast, not an invitation to conversation. People respond to the posting where they found it, yet the author rarely checks for comments on the numerous channels where he or she has scattered the message, leaving the impression that the author is aloof or arrogant or too busy or too uncaring to respond. (After a few times, that person earns an "unfollow" from me.)

Many of the worst offenders are social media consultants, those who are urging clients to "join the conversation" and advising them on best practices for engaging with customers and prospects online. This is not a best practice.

Yes, I know that conversations have become terribly fragmented, and there is no way to gather comments in one spot, which makes keeping up with the conversation much more time-consuming. But that genie is out of the bottle. Try to answer people wherever they want to continue the conversation with you--and think twice before broadcasting messages to social networks where you do not intend to be sociable.

2. Hijacking someone else's conversation.

Some people are conversationally tone-deaf because they do not know how to truly listen. They listen (or read) only as a means of finding a place to insert themselves into the conversation. These are the people who comment on a blog post primarily so they can link to their own site. They are the ones who visit the Facebook page you just spent hours creating and, rather than contributing anything of substance, post a photo or video or link promoting their own page or cause.

Have you ever known someone who had an almost uncanny ability to insert themselves into every verbal transaction? I once worked with a woman like that. She even managed to make the introduction of a guest speaker all about herself, going into detail--irrelevant detail--about some vague connection she had with the speaker.

Conversations take natural turns and wander away from the topic at hand; that's normal ebb and flow. Taking over someone else's comment thread, however, or purposely diverting it in another direction, amounts to hijacking.

3. A lack of respect for other viewpoints.

Blog comments may turn into a heated discussion with rapid-fire volleys exchanged in near-real time. That's not necessarily a bad thing; it means you have hit upon a topic that people are passionate about. What is disturbing though, is a tone-deaf attitude that demonstrates an unwillingness to consider other viewpoints or to dismiss summarily people who hold a different opinion. One of the reasons I am a fan of Conversation Agent is that Valeria treats everyone with respect, offering a thoughtful response even to dissenters.

Some people thrive on snarkiness, and it certainly can drive traffic to a controversial discussion. But it's a risky tactic and can backfire, gaining a short-term boost in readership while alienating long-time subscribers. Clever, humorous writing with an edge is difficult to pull off. If it's not your forte, don't try it.

Also, there is a fine line between being snarky and being downright mean. There is no place for bullying in civil discourse, whether online or in person. If you are the host of an online conversation, you not only have the right but the obligation to provide an open yet safe forum where differing opinions can be shared without a tone-deaf tyrant creating an untenable atmosphere.

What other behaviors have you noticed that amount to being conversationally tone-deaf?
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Connie Reece is founder and principal of Every Dot Connects, a social media consortium. She is also a co-founding member and serves on the advisory board of Social Media Club. The opinions expressed in this guest post are entirely her own and not those of Valeria Maltoni or Conversation Agent.

Comments

[Peter]

Better posted than never (sometimes we hold ourselves back in conversation and it is only afterwards we think we should have spoken up - typed this up at the time but didn't post it - I just copied it - was emptying out junk files when I came across it again and it reminded me of a more recent conversation.

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I also wonder if you can sometime misdiagnose "tone deafness" for a much more chronic (and widespread) condition which looks more like autism.

I see myself as suffering from a form of autism online. Without all that is not words I become the bench mark of what is appropriate not the "other". I read myself into the lines and comment as if to myself. You hear my voice as I hear it. But, you listen to your voice and read differently.

Trying to work out the differences between what was said/written and what was heard/read is the essence of conversation. Looking for clues (verbal and non verbal) of where we don't meet and exploring these with compassion (not respect or civility - I can respect your view that doesn't mean I have tried to understand what you are saying)

To me, great conversations are joyous labour and exhaust like a day in the garden. There is nothing easy about understanding a lifetime of experience distilled into a phrase - Unwrapping meaning like the layers of pass the parcel - anticipation growing as you approach shared understanding of words- the prize not that you agree but that you have, through the conversation, heard another voice and not your own.

I find it hard to play pass the parcel online. My technologically inspired autism renders me socially awkward at best and at worst unfit to play. I end up playing with my self.

I wonder if I'm just stubborn in not changing the way I converse with the world online- am I incapable or unwilling to change my voice to match the limitations of the technology. To mimic others because my own voice offends.

But perhaps the "problem" is not that people can't hold a tune but that others only want to listen to the tunes they like. Who is the tone deaf tyrant?

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Peter - the audience for online content in blogs sometimes seems happy with the mere confirmation of what it already thinks it knows. I keep coming back to this idea because I so often see insightful content go unnoticed. Or maybe it gets noticed by fewer readers for lack of popularity. A strong reason that moves me to ask a mix of voices - known and less known - here is that. I have enjoyed rediscovering thoughts and conversations thanks to others in the past two weeks, when my contribution has been just of supporting, listening and making the space available.

@Connie - you are very kind. Thank you. It has been exciting to welcome so many new voices in the posts and the comments for the past two weeks. All thanks to you, your readers and those of other bloggers and guest writers.

@Ari - I wrote a post on the allure and power of music to convey emotion recently about MySpace. I used Cartier as an example of a brand that capitalized on that smartly. Glad the content connected with you.

[Ari Herzog]

The appropriateness of reading your words today is I had a conversation last night about music and drawing, with the presumption that nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes must have been listening to things, anything, before they drew the objects.

Music is a powerful emotion.