Hey all, Patrick here. The question I m asked on an almost daily basis is: What is the ONE tip that will make the biggest difference in my conversations and social skills? I ll tell you what. I m going to give you 7 proven tips that, and each of them separately can make you most interesting and engaging person in the room. These are 7 carefully chosen tips that represent THE essential components of interaction and conversation that people usually fall short in. They are among the first concepts all of my coaching clients learn, so if you just follow the steps You can goodbye to awkward silences and running out of things to say, and hello to witty banter for all! To your success, Patrick King Social Interaction Specialist www.patrickkingconsulting.com www.amazon.com/author/kingpatrick
1. STRONG EYE CONTACT Eye contact seems like such an obvious concept, right? Okay, well even if you know that it s important, that doesn t mean that you re good at it or that you know how to be good at it. Thankfully with eye contact, it s a relatively low bar. You just can t be BAD at it otherwise people will assume that you are lying through your teeth or supremely uncomfortable. Whether it s true or not, it s a negative impression to make on someone. Eye contact is essentially a prerequisite these days. Maintaining strong eye contact is a plus, but it s just as important to simply not be terrible at it. Here are three key aspects to being more than adequate at eye contact. First, distinguish between a gaze and a stare. A stare is what a television news anchor might do when they are reading off the teleprompter. A stare is what I would lovingly call dead zombie eyes, where a gaze is how your eyes might look when you see three puppies playing and fighting over a stuffed cow.
Second, what do you do with your eyes? The urge to flick your eyes around the room and look beyond someone to alleviate discomfort may be very strong, but here s my one rule on eye contact: do that, but on the person s eyes and face. Travel your eyes across their eyes and the upper half of their face, and relieve the awkwardness you might have from staring deep into someone s eyes while maintaining what appears to be good eye contact. Third, here s a quick exercise for improving your eye contact and becoming comfortable with it. Go outside with a pair of sunglasses. Sit near a sidewalk with a lot of foot traffic. Face oncoming foot traffic. (If it s winter, nighttime, or otherwise inappropriate for sunglasses, you can also do this in brightly-lit malls and such.) Now make eye contact with people who are walking past you. They can t see your eyes, so they have no idea that you re looking at them. You re 100% safe. Get used to that feeling of tension from eye contact, and grow immunity to it.
2. GET YOUR GAME FACE ON Not temperature-wise like a hot dog in the microwave, but like a muscle before a zumba class. This is the same concept I cover in my training video. You can t just walk into a big party straight from waking up from a long nap. What happens when you try to do that? You ll stutter, your mind will be blank, and you ll have to keep clearing your throat because your vocal cords will be asleep still. You need to warm up, get in the zone, and get ready to socialize. Social skills are muscles that you need to stretch before vigorous use, and ignoring that fact will just ensure that you don t utilize your full potential. If you don t, you ll spend your first 3 conversations warming up and you definitely won t be as quick-witted or charming as you would like. This is why some people do pushups or scream before they go on stage to speak to a crowd, for example. They re preparing themselves mentally and physically to make sure their A GAME comes out. Some people will use external stimuli such as loud music and motivational videos (like the President s speech in the
movie Independence Day before the pilots take on the alien army), but my favorite way is a little bit more direct. READ OUT LOUD. Here s what you re going to do. Find a passage, preferably from a children s book or something with dialogue that has (1) different characters and (2) a variety of emotions. Pretend you re a third grade teacher reading to your classroom. Do all the voices, exaggerate all the emotions, and be as hyperbolic as possible. Be loud, shout, and do crazy gestures. For example, try reading the following three times. Try to push your limits and do each time more ridiculous and outlandish than the prior reading. Exaggerate the emotions! Sad/Emotional Donkey: You know, it s so sad that the lamb has to leave early. I really enjoyed spending time with him, and I m just going to miss him so much! Scheming/Mischievous Cat: Oh, I can t imagine why the lamb has to go now. I really have no idea what could have happened. I m sad just like you are. Why wouldn t I be? Dopey Dog: Hey guys, where are we going after? Can we go to the park? I really enjoy the park and running around out there. Did you know there s a drinking fountain there now?
Shy Lamb: Gosh, I m just Oh, I don t know. I can t. The park sounds fun but I just don t know. What about staying inside quietly with a movie? Notice the difference between the first and third time, just in that short span of time? Now THAT S getting warm, alert, and ready. This also increases your ability to show and express emotions, so there s an added benefit. Warming up: not just for your hamstrings.
3. REACT WITH IMPORTANCE Don t you hate when you make a joke and the person across from you just has a poker face? Zero reaction. Did they even hear what you said? Okay, maybe the joke wasn t funny but still, they could have acknowledged you to make it known that you were heard. Reactions are more important than you think. Aside from making conversations awkward and come to a screeching halt, the absence of a reaction causes a disconnect between two people. That s the power of a good reaction when the other person doesn t react to you, it s difficult to envision that this person will ever truly get you. Conversation reactions are like watching a movie without the soundtrack. If they are missing, you may not notice it at first, but pretty soon you notice that something just feels off. Reactions make people feel like you re actually listening, and it s shocking how many people don t realize that they have a perpetual poker face. People just want to be heard, so let them know you hear them!
How do you react with importance? Here s a simple technique. Instead of zoning out when you are listening to someone speak, try to pick out the primary emotion that they are conveying to you. In other words, try to predict the reaction they are seeking from you. It will probably be one of the following: laughter, agreement, excitement, sadness, or validation. Got it? Now give them that reaction and emotion. It s the best starting place and an excellent default. Give them what they are seeking to make them feel heard, then you can deviate if you wish.
4. DON T ANSWER LITERALLY Much of the time, we feel that we can t escape small talk or interview mode with friends new and old. We re stuck talking about some topic in particular, or we just struggle to get deep with people and connect on something more significant than the weather or the traffic. Psst here s a secret. It s your fault! This doesn t happen because the person you re talking to is boring it happens because YOU fail to make the conversation interesting and make it NOT boring. Okay fine, so how can you make conversations less boring for all? Don t answer questions literally. What does this mean? It means that when someone asks you how your weekend was, you don t have to answer that exact question. In fact, you shouldn t, because they probably don t care. They re just making conversation, and they don t actually care about your weekend. Heck, do you? They just want to hear something INTERESTING from you, and most of the time, answering questions literally will provide the opposite of that.
So if someone asks you about your weekend, don t answer it literally, and re-direct so you are telling them something that they might care about. How was your weekend? GOOD ANSWER: Oh, I didn t do much, but I just read the most interesting thing GOOD ANSWER: Pretty slow but did I tell you about the time I went hiking and got stalked by a bobcat last month?
5. CURIOUSER THAN THE DEAD CAT When s the last time you were genuinely curious about something? You might have to think back to your childhood. For me, it was definitely astronomy, dinosaurs, and doctors (for whatever reason). So I would ask anyone that I thought had any knowledge about those topics endless questions. I couldn t be stopped, and I always wanted to know more detail, more context, and just MORE. Now, when s the last time you were genuinely curious about SOMEONE like that? Imagine how easily that conversation would flow because you would care, be engaged, and incredibly interested. Capture that feeling and direct it towards people in your daily life. Your normal Monday morning Hey Stu, how was your weekend? would turn into something that you looked forward to all weekend, and you d have a ton of follow-up questions. But we re all so wrapped up in our own lives (selfabsorbed) that this rarely happens. That means just being curious about someone can put you FAR above the fold.
What happens when you re curious about something? You ask as many clarifying questions as possible and seek to go deeper into a topic. You want to learn everything you can. You d essentially be a question master but being a question master is actually looked upon very favorably when you focus on someone. People enjoy talking about themselves and explaining their thought and emotions, so asking questions doesn t annoy them it invigorates them. We all like the spotlight from time to time. If someone went skiing over the weekend, what might a genuinely interested person inquire about? Why did they go skiing? Why did they choose that ski lodge? Did they grow up skiing with their parents? Do they have suggestions for ski shops? Is skiing their favorite Olympic sport? Do they snowboard as well? Do they go often? Who did they go with? You get the idea.
6. KING OF STORIES Small talk can be dreadful, but that s if it remains shallow and surface-level. Here s how most small talk plays out: How are you? Good, how are you? Pretty solid. How was your weekend? Not bad. Yours? It went so quick! Sounds like somebody s got a case of the Mondays! You probably have that conversation at least a dozen times a week. It s boring and seemingly useless. So what do stories have to do with this? Stories are how you destroy small talk. Thankfully, there are only a few conversation patterns we will see in any given week. You already know the topics that will come up with coworkers, friends, family, and dodgeball teammates. What are some of these topics? There will be questions about your day, weekend, family, kids, dog, upcoming vacation, hobbies, sports, and the like.
If you know the topics, then you shouldn t give a cursory answer and simply ask the other person the same question. Take advantage of this knowledge and prepare beforehand short 15-20 second stories to answer the questions you know will come up. This will give your conversations immediate depth and direction, and it also allows you to curate the image that people have of you Remember, when people ask about your weekend, they don t mean it literally. They just want to hear something interesting about you give it to them in one way or the other.
7. KEEP THE FLOW People choose topics to talk about because they either feel a certain way about them, or the topic has made them feel a certain way. They re not saying it for no reason it matters to them. In either case, it s because they are affected on an emotional level happiness, joy, laughter, sadness, anger, you name it. It s why we share viral videos and pictures, from hilarious cat videos, to pictures that make us want to call our parents. This means that most of the time, the small details aren t important. It s less important to be exact and precise all the time. Sometimes we should even derail our train of thought and restrain ourselves to give the other person the spotlight. What is important is to understand the emotional impact that the other person wants to share and stay in resulting conversational flow. Go with them and take a backseat. So if someone tells you their story about skiing with their estranged father, focus on the emotional impact and not the fact that you have no idea how ski lifts work.
Spot the emotion that is sought to be shared and ignore everything else. It s up to you to find the flow stay on the message that other people want and show them that you feel it too. Take a step back and think about the purpose that someone is telling you something or asking you about something in daily conversation. There s probably a more deeply rooted reason than what appears on the surface. Missing the flow makes you appear annoyingly pedantic, narcissistic, and emotionally tone deaf. Finding the flow makes you a mind reader. For more information: www.patrickkingconsulting.com www.amazon.com/author/kingpatrick