Bad Office Conversations

Have you walked into work on Monday morning and been asked about your weekend while grabbing a cup of coffee?  How does the conversation go? Is the other party truly interested in your weekend activities, or do they quickly shift the conversation to tell you about their weekend? Alison Wood Brooks and Michael Yeomans have published a great new paper titled "Boomerasking: Answering Your Own Questions."  They explore how people who turn the conversation around in this manner actually harm their reputations with colleagues.  Here's what the scholars write in the abstract to their paper: 

We introduce one pervasive way people attempt to reconcile these competing goals—boomerasking—a sequence in which individuals first pose a question to their conversation partner (“How was your weekend?”), let their partner answer, and then answer the question themselves (“Mine was amazing!”). The boomerask starts with someone asking a question, but—like a boomerang—the question returns quickly to its source. We document three types of boomerasks: ask-bragging (asking a question followed by disclosing something positive, e.g., an amazing vacation); ask-complaining (asking a question followed by disclosing something negative, e.g., a family funeral); and ask-sharing (asking a question followed by disclosing something neutral, e.g., a weird dream). Though boomeraskers believe they leave positive impressions, in practice, their decision to share their own answer—rather than follow up on their partner’s—appears egocentric and disinterested in their partner’s perspective. As a result, people perceive boomeraskers as insincere and prefer conversation partners who straightforwardly self-disclose. 

For more on how to conduct effective conversations, I highly recommend my former student Charles Duhigg's book, Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection.  Duhigg, a former writer for the New York Times, explains how to engage with others in a way that builds strong, enduring relationships.