That is where the real personality shows itself. No act in life requires more attention, though it be the commonest thing in life... Experts feel the pulse of the soul in the tongue, wherefore the sage said, 'Speak, that I may know thee.'... In conversation discretion is more important than eloquence.
Baltasar Gracián, 1647 (tr. Joseph Jacobs, 1892)
Conversation is the commonest act in life and the least prepared for. It is also where people form their durable estimates of you: not from your work, which they rarely see in detail, but from twenty minutes at a table. The closing verdict of the passage is the practical one: discretion outranks eloquence. The impressive talker who says one indiscreet thing loses more than the plain talker gains in an hour. And the register must fit the company, plain among friends, dignified where dignity is owed, which is the same adaptation maxim 77 requires, applied to the most frequent act of your life.
Practice
- Prepare lightly for consequential conversations: two questions worth asking, one thing worth saying, and a clear sense of what you will not discuss.
- Grade yourself on discretion afterwards, not on wit: did anything leave your mouth that should not have?
- Ask more than you answer; the person who asks well is remembered as excellent company and learns the room at the same time (maxim 117 keeps you off the topic list).
Use this when
- Use this at every professional gathering, where reputations are made in fragments and remembered whole.
- Use it in the first meetings with anyone senior; the estimate formed there is hard to revise later.
Ignore this when
- Don't script conversation into performance; preparation should disappear into ease (maxim 127's grace, maxim 123's warning).
- Don't be so discreet that nothing is exchanged; a conversation with no disclosure is an interview, and people leave feeling handled.
A picture of it
Two candidates were taken to dinner after equally strong interviews, which the firm treats as the actual final round. One talked well and, over dessert, described a former employer's confidential difficulties with some relish. The other said less, asked good questions, and mentioned nothing about anyone she had worked for except what she had learned. The partner's note, written that night, contained one line that decided it: the first man will be entertaining about us too, eventually.
They will judge you on twenty minutes at a table. Bring questions, bring discretion, and leave the confidences at home.