A conversation becomes useful when understanding matters more than performing intelligence.

Conversations that are really about demonstrating cleverness produce nothing. Each person is composing, positioning, and waiting, and the actual subject becomes a stage. Understanding requires a different orientation entirely, one where being wrong is acceptable and the point is what you leave with rather than how you came across.

Try entering your next serious discussion with the goal of learning one thing you did not know. That single aim changes what you ask, how you listen, and what you are willing to concede. It is also, incidentally, more impressive than any amount of performing.