About ten years ago I worked in a bar/restaurant during my weekends and holidays. I guess you can describe it as a bit posh with its marble floor, black leather seats and impressive half-round, wooden bar. The main reason for me to be there (besides the pocket money) was to learn, it was during my time at Hotelschool.

This was a busy business and some days of the week there were a lot more people having their drinks at the bar than at others. After a while it occurred to me that this was always with the same guy behind the bar so of course I wanted to find out what it is that he does! “What is going on here?” One evening we were having some drinks after we finished and I asked him for his trick. He started laughing and gave me a one-liner that has stuck with me to this day.

There are a million and one blogs and websites out there that give you all sorts of insights in communication styles, models, structures, etc. I’m not going to list a Top 10 or Top 15 of websites here, if you have a play with Stumble you’ll be amused for days. What I find significant is that most of these seem to be very serious and forget about the fun in conversations. And I don’t know about you but I fancy a good laugh.

One of the many ways of doing this is by deliberately misunderstanding the other person. Paraphrase what they just said in such a way that they are compelled to explain in a more clear and specific way what they mean. This can lead to quite a different conversation than you would normally have. I’ve been playing around with this lately, I am easily amused. Frank Farrelly does this in a great way in his Provocative Therapy sessions to get a result. Please make sure you have a good level of rapport first, otherwise this can quickly turn out to be a not so fun conversation…

Funny how certain things just stay with you, I can still see us sitting there after work when he put his glass down, looked me in the eye and said “You’d be amazed at what you can get away with saying to people, as long as you make them laugh and they think you’re the idiot”.