Conversational Threading: The Art of Effortlessly Fueling a Conversation

How often do your conversations with people run dry? You have nothing more to talk about, so you awkwardly repeat the same phrases, ask the same questions, and let any spark of interest fizzle out. You find that most of your conversations quickly expire, not because you don’t enjoy them but because you don’t know how to fuel them.

Running out of things to say during conversations is a common problem among people who are naturally introverted.

Here’s the thing.

You don’t know how to fuel a conversation because there’s no structure to your conversations. You say whatever comes to your mind and quickly burn through things to talk about. You frontload your efforts instead of being a little strategic with your conversations. No wonder you run out of things to say before the conversation has even begun.

This is where conversational threading comes in handy. Conversational threading is a technique that helps you navigate a conversation, steer it towards areas of interest, and make it self-sustainable. Conversational threading provides structure to your conversations which gives it some much-needed flow.

Once you get conversational threading down, you will find that your conversations:

• Flow organically
• Last much longer
• Always have a route to follow
• It is much less stressful!

Let’s have a look at how you can apply conversational threading to your interpersonal connections, starting now.

What Is Conversational Threading?

Conversational threading is a technique that helps you keep a conversation flowing. We can break this technique down into smaller chunks, called threads. Conversational threads are leads, otherwise, points of interest that you can pull out of an existing conversation to elaborate on.

Think of them as keywords that someone mentions when they’re talking to you. You pick out the most interesting keywords and ask questions about them, which creates new conversational pathways.

Think of a conversational thread as a hyperlink in a blog article. If I mention the term social calibration you follow that link, it’s going to lead you to another article containing other hyperlinks leading to related articles.

As you’re reading that article, another topic might pique your interest, which leads you down that rabbit hole, and so forth. Let’s call it the Wikipedia effect, which forms a vast net of topics. This website is structured as an interconnected web of content, and that’s how you should look at conversations.

The topics are always there, you just need an avenue to access them so they naturally roll into the conversation.

Every person has a broad pallet of information, ideas, and perspectives, all tucked away in that mind of theirs. Without being prompted, they probably won’t talk about anything in particular, so it’s your job to identify points of interest during conversations, ask questions about them, and expand on the person’s mental archive.

You can only talk about one topic for so long without branching away from it because, sooner or later, the topic runs dry. Naturally, people steer conversations into other topics by selecting keywords that have already been put on the table.

We use these points of interest to transition the conversation into different subjects. By doing this, the conversation flows seamlessly, and there’s always something to talk about.

Conversational Threading Example: Identifying Threads

Read the conversation below.

Try to find as many conversational threads as you can. These threads should be previously mentioned words or phrases that you could ask questions about and change the direction of the conversation. After picking your threads, read the ones I wrote down too, and compare.

Person A: “Why are you changing careers?”

Person B: “Well, I’m just tired of my job in software engineering. It’s just so repetitive, and I feel like I’m not learning, so every day is just the same thing. Luckily, I got an opportunity to do video editing for a friend of mine, so that’s what I’m going to do.”

Person A: “Sounds interesting. How did you get the opportunity to video edit?”

Person B: “Well, I know this person who has a startup, creating short-form content and commercials. I have always loved the process of video editing, and I often create videos as an avocation. So, we talked about it, and I showed him my content, and he said that’s what he’s looking for, and gave me a job on the spot.”

• Tired of my job
• Software engineering
• Not learning or growing
• New opportunity
• Video editing
• Friend
• Startup
• Short-form content and commercials
• Love video editing
• Avocation
• My content
• Job on the spot

How to Use Conversational Threads

Threads are always present in a conversation. We can interpret any point in a conversation as a thread. By identifying threads, you can ask questions about them immediately or revisit them later.

You should only follow a thread that you are interested in, otherwise, you’ll just be conversing as a chore, which is best to avoid.

Let’s look at an example:

Question: What have you been doing today?
Response: I caught up with some friends and went fishing. Otherwise, I’ve just been relaxing. You?

From this response, there are already a few points of interest that we can identify.

This could be the topic of fishing, friends, or relaxing. Depending on what picks your interest the most, you already have a few avenues that you can lead the conversation down.

In this example, let’s hone in on the keyword fishing. From this one thread, some questions you could ask include:

• How long have you been fishing for?
• Where did you go fishing?
• Who did you go fishing with?
• How often do you go fishing?
• Why did you go fishing?

You can ask anything regarding the topic of fishing. This person would not have mentioned it if they weren’t willing to talk about it. If you also know a lot about the hobby, you can use this as a pivot point to engage in a more interesting conversation on mutual interests.

Generating Discussion via Conversational Threading

From the above exercise where you identified some threads from the dialog, pick out 5 of those threads and think of 3 questions you could ask about each of those threads. Below is my example.

1. Computer engineering
2. Not learning
3. Video editing
4. Startup
5. My content

Set 1:

• How long have you been in software engineering for?
• What do you like about software engineering?
• Is it difficult? 

Set 2:

• Why do you feel it’s important to keep learning?
• What are you wanting to learn?
• What have you learned in your job?

Set 3:

• What sort of video editing do you do?
• Do you enjoy video editing?
• What software do you use?

Set 4:

• How long has the startup been going for?
• Is it a big group of people working on it?
• How did they start their own business?

Set 5:

• What content do you create?
• Why are you creating content?
• How much content have you created so far?

How to Create Conversational Pathways

Someone telling you that they are stressed about work could go in many different directions. You are at an intersection. Breaking this down into three avenues, you could use the following responses.

1. Why are you stressed?
2. What do you do for work?
3. What do you need to do?

These are some branches for this thread, with each branch leading to more branches. Some of these branches will lead to weird and wacky topics, some will lead-off track, and some will die out.

Let’s have a look at a conversation below, and see how it can branch down into different avenues of conversation.

Applying Conversational Threading to the Real World

So now you have the theory. It’s pretty simple, isn’t it?

Conversational threading is simply the act of paying attention to what people are saying by practicing active listening and asking questions about any noteworthy points they mention.

But it can take some time for this process to happen naturally. Expect that you might be a little clunky when first implementing conversational threading in your conversations. However, with some practice, you’ll find that it becomes second nature.

Conversational threading is a valuable technique, especially if you often find yourself awkwardly caught with nothing to say.

Start applying this technique to your daily conversations, and see where your conversations will take you. Most importantly, have fun!