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i am not smooth with this step, it takes me quite some effort to say the typical conversation terminator phrases and most of them sound like a drag. so instead of trying to follow the conventional lines, you make your own. you say what you feel at the end of the conversation and the parts you appreciate and the parting words :).
don't force expressions on your face, it looks bad, quite the opposite of what you expected. instead be genuinely interested in the conversations and the rest will flow out of you in the moment and that would reach the other person and convey part of what you think of what's being said.
the so called "clever people" never say the thing that they want to say directly but rather start with a buildup around it which mostly is to present the thing from their perspectives and convince the listeners that what they are saying is the truth. same goes for flattery, it's hardly of any use but it can cause great destruction if not disposed off in time.
someone told me "you are smart" and i stopped studying thinking that i will manage it as "i am smart"... i got the lowest marks of my whole academic history. now i put it as "i am not dumb" as that's not a self-destructive statement but rather one which reminds me of my abilities to handle difficult situations. the first one comes forward as an excuse, the second one as a support. reading books makes the self plesant.
be a good listener and don't rush while speaking so that others can understand you. in meetings it's important to keep stuff in your stomach and not reveal the secrets unintentionally. one way of making sure is to not be frank in official setting even when the other person is. don't boast about things or give advise unless asked explicitly or you have something highly valuable to contribute. treat discussions as opportunities to learn from others, not to assert your own opinions.
often there are chats and one might have an urge to participate in them. that is all fine but others might not perceive your texts as you expect them to. so it's important to not type anything that comes to your mind, questions more specifically. stay with your questions for a while and once they have settled into something worth asking, share it with others. refrain from random commentry about your preferences and opinions, keep it more professional, about the work. again focus is the key here.
it's quite strange with opinions, you like someone based on their opinions and yet it's quite tricky when it comes to sharing them, one needs to look at the right time and choose the right words to say what they want to say. and not just words but the intent with which you say them and what it looks like to others also matters.
develop your own style of conversation, you probably already have one. this would be unique to you and people subconsciously start recognising it. like mmeeks lowers down his voice around the end of the sentence or when mst takes pauses and talks in a plain sad tone about the writer bugs situation. thorsten raises his voice when he has to emphasise on something, like the hump in a camel case variable name, armin's classic "whatever, we will see"...
pauses are a really important part of the conversation, for some reason people get awkeword then. conversation is like a dance with some moments expressing extreme expressions while others expressing calmness. these pauses are the calm moments where both the participants are absorbing what was said and preparing for the next phase. no one likes if you keep dragging a conversation without letting them have some space.
one of my uncles adviced me on this. when you listen to someone you shouldn't just nod and say yes, that's just not enough to keep others interested in the conversation. as important as it is to listen to what's being said carefully is to convey back what you understood from that, things related to that which you noticed in your own daily life. that way they can correct you if you got a wrong idea of what's being said and if you understood it right then you convey it to the other that "you are listening".
thinking that way you don't react to what was said but rather understand it and reply in the most constructive way possible so that you learn something out of the situation. remember the goal of a discussion is not to prove your point but to reach the best conclusion which a single mind otherwise couldn't have.
i learnt a good lesson long time ago while interacting with mike kaganski and other developers in irc (and ville on cpp irc). it was mostly my survival instinct trying to find the best route out of hard situations. it was to think that whatever was said was said in "good faith". it's the human mind's fate to seek happiness on one hand and focus on the negatives or create conflicts out of nothing on the other. pedro asked me to "unassign the preview dropdown task" and i think he made the right call. it's not good to have things sitting on top of your head, eating part of your attention. have a few of them and you are left with nothing at the end. see the positives.
i was working on an issue issue and i had some talks with darshan and he was going to test the patch. but since that chat was private, pedro didn't now about it and that lead to some confusion. it's very important that you keep things public and don't just push changes out of no-where. keeping people informed is quite important when working remotely.
i didn't ask that publically as i thought it was a dumb question and i would be judged. but as it turned out my questions weren't dumb, in-fact most of the questions aren't dumb. so one should not care about what others would think and just ask the question they have. of-course it's not the same as "think and shoot", keep it with yourself for a moment or two and then ask, don't be in a hurry (you can ask later too).
