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Becoming a Middler

Are you a middler? Do you want to be?

I wasn’t enthusiastic about the name, myself. “Middler” sounds, well, average. Maybe even a little bit boring.

The idea behind it intrigues me though. I came across “middler” in Priya Parker’s Substack. You might know of Parker from her book The Art of Gathering.

“A great middler isn’t necessarily the funniest person at the table,” she explains, “or even the best storyteller. Instead of making sure that they’re interesting, they make the group interesting. Larry David describes a middler as a point guard distributing the ball.”

I don’t know from basketball. I had to Google “point guard” to figure out what that person does on a team.

I get the concept of making the group interesting, though. That’s a gift! Or maybe it’s a skill that any of us can develop.

The notion of middling showed up in one of the last episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm. The scene was a dinner party turning into a snooze-fest. The conversation was falling flat, two people were doing most of the talking, and the rest were looking very bored.

That’s when David came to the rescue, telling one of his buddies, “You can’t handle the middle. You’re not a middler.”

When they switched places, the conversation took off, everyone participated, and the dinner party was saved.

So, who can handle the middle?

What makes a good middler?

Interesting stories don’t hurt … but they’re not sufficient. The inadequate middler in Curb Your Enthusiasm pointed out he’d told his stories before and got laughs. They sure were missing the mark that night though.

One possible problem? They were all about him!

Good middlers don’t need to be the center of attention. They’re happy bringing up a subject that others can weigh in on and then getting out of the way to let them all do it. They don’t need to be in the spotlight themselves.

A gifted middler asks questions and makes sure everyone in the group gets a shot at answering them.

Now, that doesn’t mean we have to go to a social—or business—gathering with a list of brilliant questions in our hip pocket.

It does mean listening helps.

Sometimes we hear the germ of a terrific conversation-expanding question in what one person is telling us.

A client said something funny at work the other day. Well, the rest of us work too, right? Some people will jump right in with a “that reminds me” kind of story about their own experience. But not everyone is so comfortable stepping up.

That’s where the middler comes in. That one guy’s anecdote about a client conversation prompts the middler’s question to others at the table, especially anyone who seems to be holding back a bit.

Middling may just mean opening the door, so everyone gets a turn to talk.

And then, sometimes we need to steer.

A good middler notices when a conversation seems to include only a couple of people. So, they intentionally expand the circle, drawing the rest of the group into it.

They might do that by literally naming someone to include them in the subject at hand.

Or, more subtly, they might use body language to focus everyone’s attention in a different direction, by turning their own head or even their full upper body to face that person who seems left out.

Just by doing that, you might cause others to make the same kind of shift. When people are in rapport, they will often mirror each other’s physicality without even being consciously aware they’re doing it.

Use the time for high-value talk.

If you hear the conversation devolve into logistics, checking times and dates, or maybe just a couple of people catching up on information, that’s the time for some middling.

How can you expand that conversation to include everyone else? Or maybe better yet, how can you shift to a more meaningful subject that can’t be handled with a text or an email.

Our time together physically, in a room somewhere, is precious—and much rarer than it used to be, don’t you think?

That COVID isolation seems to have created a permanent change in the amount of time we spend at home. And the trend away from social activities was already underway long before the pandemic struck.

Ready to practice?

Next time you’re in a group of say, five or more take a moment to notice what’s happening. Is one person dominating the conversation? Is somebody else holding back—pushing food around their plate maybe, or looking out the window, or checking their phone?

That’s when you move into middling so you can make it more meaningful.

Your wheels are already turning, aren’t they? Tell us how you’re going to do some middling in a comment below.