"You have the coolest Mom"
"I can just sit and talk to your mother forever..."
"How is your Mom? I miss talking to her"
I regularly hear praises and inquiries from friends of mine about my mother. What's funny is they don't always come from my closest friends. I'm sure you're picturing a family-friend bond where everyone grew up in the same neighborhood. That's not true. It's not the quantity of time my friends spent around my mother, but the quality of the time with her.
The most important skill I learned from my family is the art of conversation. All families or organizations thrive by the direction of their leader and my mother's ability to relate to all types of people (through the secret of listening) set a great example for us to follow. How else would one person get along with so many different people, each with their own unique personality types?
One universal truth among people is that they all like to talk about themselves. This isn't a statement on selfishness, it's important for us all to talk about our hopes, fears, joys and sadness. We like to be heard, to click into a community, to get along with and relate to others - it's as important as the air we breathe.
I recently read Malcolm Gladwell's newest book 'Outliers', in it he uncovers some hidden truths about success. One premise Gladwell examines is how many successful people came from a particular background, generation, family or class. Simply stated - the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
Conversation is in many respects a friendly game of tennis and my mother is the Chris Evert of her sport. The back and forth nature of this game of tennis begins with someone being a good receiver of information – a good listener. My mother's children couldn't help but grow to be good at conversation. We were trained with a daily example of how to listen, when to speak and how to do so. She bred in her children a family of conversation tennis pros. Today, as each of us play in our real-world tennis matches, whether it's business meetings, networking or client relations we benefit from that training.
