Chapter 4:  Developing and Maintaining Relationships

“I’d like to learn to make more friends….”

This is probably one of the most commonly heard statements I get from students who take my Interpersonal Communications class.  Its funny, because the students who are in my class often say this, but I don’t think they realize there are times I feel the exact same way.  For whatever reason–I theorize social media–when it comes to in-person, genuine human connections, we seem more apart from one another than ever before.  My personal theory is we delude ourselves in thinking we are connected because we have 100+ Facebook or Instagram friends and in our heads think this shows we are interconnected.  That is all well and good, but we all experience times when we’d like to talk face to face with someone about the hard day we’re having; or we have times we’d love to share the joy of playing a video or board game with another in person to hear their laughs of joy when they win or lose.  This type of interaction seems to be decreasing more and more….

So, if you are a student thinking you’d like to make more friends, know you’re not alone.  Instead, you’re in the growing majority, sadly.  So what to do about it?  A good starting point can come through club offerings on your campus.  At the school I work at alone, there are 50+ clubs and organizations.  All kinds of things a student can choose from–video game club, science fiction club, religious-based clubs, politically based clubs, environmental change clubs, volunteerism clubs, there are many!  A nice thing about attending a club on campus is you already know you and the other attendees share at least on thing in common.

What if you attend a smaller school where there are fewer club offerings?  Or, perhaps there is a club that interests you, but meets at a time you already have another commitment?  Another great way to meet people in the larger community with a common interest is through volunteer work.  There are so very many great organizations that need help–humane societies for abandoned pets, food pantries for people in need, disability support organizations for support and socialization like Special Olympics, religiously affiliated groups for community service and prayer, mentoring programs like Big Brothers/Big Sisters of America.  Again, countless ways to get involved with others who share your similar interests on a particular topic.

Communication Exercise:  Connections

So this exercise will be a two step process.  The first is gather a list of all the campus clubs that meet on campus, and then another list of places people can volunteer with in your area.  If you have access to a computer lab, take your class as a group and do this exploration together.  If you a computer lab is not accessible, just have your instructor gather these two lists ahead of time and make copies.  After reviewing all the club and volunteer opportunities, have each person in class identify two different club and volunteer organizations that would be of interest and in a group share your ideas for each person why you’d choose those and what sounds interesting about them.  If more than one person in the class identifies a similar club or volunteer organization, consider attending a meeting or volunteer site together!

“Its hard for people to resist light during dark times…”

If you go on You Tube and search for the term “ways to make friends”, there are tons of videos out there.  A lot of them though are geared towards adults, or are veiled ways to get you to purchase somebodies self-help book.  One that I really did like though with simple and practical tips I found through Pysch2Go called, “Making friends when you’re socially awkward”.  Don’t worry if you do not believe you are socially awkward, the lessons in this short video are very universal.

Conversation Skills 101

An analogy I like to use for good conversations is ideally it should like a tennis match.  Person A asks a question person B finds interesting and then Person B answers back.  Then Person B asks a question person A finds interesting and then Person A answers back.   And so on.  Ideally the length of questions, and responses, are of the same rough duration of time and hold both participants attention.  Imagine the last time you had a conversation with someone, was it like a tennis match with similar length statements?  Did you talk more than the other person?  Less?  Did you ask the same amount of questions that they did?  More?  Thinking about your conversations in this matter helps us there is almost a mathematical element to interpersonal communications we perhaps are missing.

So how do you generate questions that the other person might be interested in answering?  If you know the person well, this is certainly easier.  Hopefully you’ve paid attention to past conversations you’ve had with the person and taken note of the things they like to talk about.  Did they talk about hobbies they have?  Things they like to do?  Things they enjoy talking about?  Having this information can make it easy to craft questions connected to what that person finds personally interesting.

For strangers, this is a more difficult task.  How do you think of things to ask when you know almost nothing about the person?  Looking for clues based on the way the person is dressed or what they are carrying can sometimes help.  If they have a t-shirt mentioning a movie or musician, ask them why they chose to wear it.  If they’re carrying an object that is a little unusual like a book or a computer, ask them what they have that item for.  If none of that is present, aim for neutral general topics that are not polarizing but shared experiences–the weather, the time of year if a holiday is close by, the plans for the upcoming weekend or if they’ve seen any interesting movies or television shows for example.  Broad questions where there can be many different types of answers are good ideas.  For new relationships, its generally good to avoid topics which can be more polarizing such as politics, religion, or dating practices.  These can be great topics when you know someone a little better, but bad choices for initial conversation starters.

Communication Exercise:  Conversation Practice

For this exercise, arrange the chairs in your classroom that everyone is sitting in to form two circles, one smaller and one larger,  kinda like this (don’t worry if the circles aren’t perfect).  The idea is to have each person in class face another person.  If there is an odd number of participants in class, have one person face an empty chair.

Now, using the list of questions below, have each pair of people have a conversation using that question as a central focus of the conversation.  The person on the inside of the circle answers the question first, while the outside circle member then asks a follow up question connected to the inside persons response. Then, the outside circle member answers the question, and the inside person asks a follow up question connected to their response.  After everyone has had a chance to response, have each person in the outside circle get up from their chairs and move one chair over in the a clockwise direction (the inside circle stays put).  Then, use the same format for the next question.  Questions you should use for this exercise are pasted below:

Questions for Each Pairing:

• What do you like to do for fun on the weekends?
• What is your favorite movie?
• What is your favorite TV or thing to stream online?
• What are you studying here at the college?
• What are you thinking of the weather lately?
• What’s your favorite place to out to eat or what type of food do you generally like?
• (If there’s a holiday coming up), what are you plans for the upcoming holiday?
• What do you think of the college?
• Where did you grow up?
• Do you like living in this area?

There are other questions you can probably think of too, the theme of all of them however are they are not overly polarizing and allow for all kinds of open ended responses.

Worksheet #4

Practicing Conversations

Instructions:  Have a conversation like we talked about in class with three different people.  Write a summary of what you learned below:

Conversation #1

Person you spoke to:

How did you start the conversation?

What did you talk about in the body of the conversation?

How did you wrap up the conversation?

How would you rate how “performed” in the conversation?

Conversation #2

Person you spoke to:

How did you start the conversation?

What did you talk about in the body of the conversation?

How did you wrap up the conversation?

How would you rate how “performed” in the conversation?

Conversation #3

Person you spoke to:

How did you start the conversation?

What did you talk about in the body of the conversation?

How did you wrap up the conversation?

How would you rate how “performed” in the conversation?