Nick HutchisonFounder and CEO, BookThinkers

There is an art to conversation!

12 Jul 2023 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:01

In this YouTube presentation, Nick Hutchison argues that conversation is a craft that can be learned rather than an innate talent. Drawing on material from his "Speakeasy" book and from bi‑annual lectures he gives to communication classes at a New York university, he explains how workplace conversations can be improved through preparation, practice, and mindset. Hutchison emphasizes that while a conversation cannot be perfectly scripted, speakers can control their entry point—by being self‑aware, setting intentions, and rehearsing key habits. The talk positions the "Speakeasy" book as a reusable tool‑book filled with lessons, stories, and actionable exercises that students and professionals can repeatedly reference to become more adept conversationalists.

Chapters

is an art to conversation. It's not just this gray area, something that you can learn. But so it's funny, Nicholas, because I speak to college students twice a year up at a university in New York, and I actually do a lecture for different classes. And these are communication classes. And a lot of it is how you need to be within the workplace in a lot of the ways and how you could work on communicating. So there are actual things that were written in Speakeasy that came from a bunch of those lectures in helping students know how they could have better conversations. And what I wanted to make it about was, look, you cannot map out the perfect conversation. You can't plan it and, you know, get from the beginning A to Z and on a straight line. There's so many different ways that every conversation can go. But what you can control is how you need to be going into it, maybe a little bit of preparedness stuff about yourself or certain things you can practice. And through more conversations, you could become adept at it. So the book is a guidebook. It is— it's a tool book that you can go back to for over and over again, even though it does read like a book. And there are lessons and stories in a lot of the examples. While each chapter concludes