Ben Franklin’s 6 Steps to Becoming a Good Conversationalist

In a 1748 edition of “Poor Richard Improved,” Franklin laid out the following six ways to succeed in conversation.

Franklin framed a good conversationalist as one who “hear[s] much”—in other words, a good listener. Christin Hume/Unsplash

While recently participating in a course on business and networking skills, I took part in an interesting exercise. Pairing every individual with another class member, the instructor gave each team a couple of minutes to discover two previously unknown things they held in common.

The results were fascinating. Not only were a number of topics covered, but conversation flowed and was quite enjoyable when both parties made a focused effort to discover things about each other.