Alternatives To Circling For Facilitating Group Connections

August 2, 2025

Circling, for anyone who hasn't tried it, is an unusual kind of "authentic relating" group activity that can help people better understand each other and themselves. Thinking about it got me wondering - what other similar activities can a group do together that can accomplish different results (that might have their own unique strengths and weaknesses)? Here's my brainstormed list of Circling alternatives. I'll start with Circling itself, for those who are not familiar. Note: if you plan to ...

Eight methods to make conversations with acquaintances more interesting

December 3, 2022

If you're like me and really dislike small talk, you may find these ideas useful. (1) If you end up talking about their work, ask what they (i) most like about it and (ii) find most challenging about it. (2) If they end up asking about your work, try to explain what you do in a way you've never experimented with before. Example: if you're a programmer, maybe you'll say your job is to convert ambiguous human goals to instructions that are so precise a computer can follow them. ...

Conversation Etiquette – How Much to Talk

May 17, 2019

thoughtful young ethnic women having conversation at table at home

Have you noticed that people often talk more (or less) than their share in one-on-one conversations? What percent of the time should you talk when you are one-on-one with a close friend, acquaintance, or stranger? I ran a study to investigate that question using our Positly.com platform (n=143 participants in the US). See an image summarizing the results here: You might think that introverts would want the other person to talk more of the time, and extroverts would prefer to talk more, b...

Simple Advice on Being More Likeable

February 2, 2018

Books about how to be likable and charismatic often say things like: LOOK make eye contact when people are talking to you (but look away occasionally so as not to be creepy, and look away for a greater proportion of the time when you're talking since that's what people do naturally) REPEAT reflect back to people what they've said to you (e.g., "So you're saying that…") ASK get people talking about themselves by asking questions, and follow up to their responses with further questions (...