You’re at lunch. You sit down with a burger and fries. Across the room, you see a group of kids. In particular, you see a person who stands out. Everyone there seems to be friends with this person. You have talked to this person before, and they are charismatic and easy to talk to. This is who you might aspire to be. In this blog, I will be discussing strategies to connect with people and get people to really listen to what you are saying. This blog is inspired by Dale Carnegie’s book, “How to win friends and influence people.”
Table of Contents
Methods to Become a Better Communicator
Why Does It Matter
In life, communicating with others is everything. You may think that this skill is only important in certain situations. You might ask, “what if I become a programmer and I don’t need to talk to people?” While this could be true, you can get so much farther in your career if you are able to collaborate with others. If you have bigger ambitions, the ability to communicate is necessary to achieve things, like forming your own company. Many of the most successful people are where they are because of their ablity to communicate and connect with others. Being able to communicate well with people goes hand in hand with good leadership. I am not saying that you need to try to get people to simply like you. In order to truly work well with other people, you should be able to show people how you are able to help them and how they could possibly help you, too.
Methods to Become a Better Communicator is Stress
Connecting effectively with other people all boils down to one central concept. Showing the other person that you are interested in who they are and what they do. So in this post, I will outline a few key parts to doing this.
Methods to Become a Better Communicator
If someone came up to you and started talking to you only about their life and what they have accomplished, you might feel uncomfortable by this. You might think, “who is this arrogant guy?” This is why it is important to not lead conversation talking about yourself. You should aim to ask people about what is happening in their lives or about events pertaining to them.
Avoid Criticizing People
Now this may sound like not criticizing people at all, but this is not what I am saying. For example, you have a presentation and immediately after you present, your peer starts critiquing you, saying that you spoke too quickly. Even if they have valid suggestions, you might be irked. You might feel upset and feel that their comment is attacking you because they only criticized you. When offering suggestions, you should aim to express first what the person did well and then carefully phrase what they could work on to avoid having them feel that you are attacking them.
This goes for complaining as well. If your mom worked for hours to prepare your dinner, the last thing, she wants to hear is that the chicken could have used more seasoning. Comments like these are inconsiderate and can cause people to have negative opinions of you. It might not seem like you are being mean, but this is one common mistake people make when interacting with others.
This segues into the next point…
Meaningful Appreciation
You can tell when people give you fake compliments and don’t really mean it. This is why you need to really think hard about why you appreciate someone. You need to think about you compliment by really showing the other person that you paid attention to them so your compliment reflects that. For example, you can say “I really like your sense of style, you always pair the colors of your tops and bottoms really well.” You always need to show it in your tone of voice. It might seem awkward at first to give these types of compliments, but over time you will get used to it and you will be able to pull it off.
Know other people’s names
It is always super awkward when you forget someone’s name and have to ask, “what is your name?” A person’s name is the most important thing to them. It is only human nature to prioritize ourselves first, so to really get along with people, you need to make an effort to remember their name. I think writing down names is a helpful strategy when you first hear a new person’s name. You can also try memorization strategies like linking them to something you are interested in. For example, you can say, “oh, this person’s name is John so I can link it to psyduck because he has a pet duck.” It may sound stupid, but if you use something you are interested in, it can work well.
Try to encourage others to talk
I think that most people would not say that they enjoy listening to others talk about themselves. This is why it is important when in conversation, you should coax the other person to share about themselves. From their job, to their hobbies, you can learn a lot about a person, which is useful in connecting with them as well because they will find you more enjoyable to talk to because you actively listen. Now it wouldn’t really be a conversation if you just kept asking questions. For more than half of the time, try to have the other person share about themselves. For your portion of time, try to share what you find relevant to the conversation such as recent events, or news you think the other person will find interesting. If you can find commonality, that’s great that means you can probably click with that person or at least have an enjoyable conversation.
Conclusion
Developing your social skills and learning to communicate can help you to improve all aspects of your life and may open doors that may not have been possible before. Getting along is a valuable skill and helps in all fields and situations. While it may be uncomfortable and difficult at first, talking and connecting with other people will slowly become a habit and it will feel natural. Thank you for reading Impromental and be sure to stay tuned in for the next post.