Is There Room for Me, or the Humble Approach to Good Conversation

I have begun the rather old-fashioned practice of hosting tea for friends. This is nothing fancy, mind you, just tea and biscuits, but it is simple and deliberate and a great way to see people that otherwise I might not. Plus, it is a great excuse to justify both my high-tech teapot as well as all of those snooty teas I buy when traveling.

Here’s how it works. I invite four friends to tea on a given weekend. (It’s best to do handwritten, mailed invitations for this sort of thing so that people know that you really mean it.) I ask each friend to bring along a friend of theirs that I do not know, and then I pray that people RSVP on time, because if they don’t, then I have to try and match someone else to the existing invitation set. We then gather, hang out around our kitchen table, drink tea, eat cookies — simple!

I met one recent tea attendee for breakfast not long after I’d hosted. We did a retrospective (yes, I know, how very agile of me) around what worked, what didn’t work, and what I should experiment with doing at future tea gatherings. All in all, we thought the event had gone swimmingly as women found commonalities with people they hadn’t known until an hour earlier, and there was so much laughter and joy. Great, we thought — it worked! Let’s do more!

But then she asked a hypothetical question, thinking of all of the people that didn’t know one another at that table: “Is there room for me in that conversation?”

Honestly, I put down the bit of bacon that was making its way to my mouth. I stopped and thought long and hard about what she had said. What an incredible question. 

Personally, I like to think that there is room for any and everyone in any conversation, but the reality is quite the opposite. There are obvious factors such as the topic under discussion, agreements and disagreement, but what about vocabulary, body language, volume, if someone is an extreme introvert, or if someone is just having a socially off day? There are so many ways to exclude someone from a conversation, and so many of them are unintentional or inadvertent. We don’t intend to keep someone out, but we so often do so.

And this got me to thinking: What would it be like to take the humble approach to conversations? What would it be like to consider what another person or another group needs in order to know that they can contribute to what is being said, to know that they will be included? There is that old chestnut about people not listening to one another because they are just waiting for their turn to talk, but that tough nut has survived this long because there is some meat on it. For the most part, conversations are a tennis ball, lobbed back and forth until it lands in the net. But they don’t have to be. Conversations can and should be an expression of our best selves.

One thing I love about getting older, having more experience and wisdom and just overall good sense, is knowing when I need to step up and do something. As a coach, part of my job is to hold the space for the client, to provide questions that will loosen the knots. Shouldn’t this be my job as a host as well? Shouldn’t I hold the space, make certain that all are included, keep humble and kind at my own forefront? Without a doubt. It just took a friend asking me a really hard question to help me to get there.

Will I continue to host tea? Of course! It’s too good an idea, too much fun for me to not do so. But going forward, I pledge to be more mindful, a better host. My duties don’t stop at keeping teacups full and cookies within reach. The kind approach, the humble approach, is where the real reason to gather is. My real vocation is to hold the space for all around my table, giving them voice and making them welcome. The humble approach is not just the kind approach, but my approach.