What are useful social skills that can be picked up quickly?
By Peter Zbrojkiewicz
These 3 skills will completely change your social life. If you use them you'll connect with people on a deeper level than you're used to.
You'll learn to love talking with people, and people will love talking with you.
Skill #1 - A good listener doesn't listen to respond. They listen to learn.
"Listening" is not just "hearing". It's asking good questions that help you understand the other person.
My girlfriend told me "I don't like it when you tell me how to do things. I feel like you're judging me."
"I'm not judging you." I said. "It was just a suggestion."
I was not listening.
Regardless of how I experienced it, her experience was that I was judging her.
A bad listener focuses on explaining his own experience.
A good listener focuses on learning about the other person's experience:
- "Which part makes you feel like I'm judging you?"
- "Was it what I said, or how I said it?"
- "How would you like me to make suggestions in future? Or would you prefer it if I didn't make suggestions?"
A good listener improves the way he relates with the other person by learning how they think. Learning what's important to them.
A bad listener learns nothing.
At an interview for a sales job I was asked "How will you bring us 10 new clients in your first month?"
I didn't have an answer prepared. I panicked and blurted out the usual ways of reaching new clients. It was an empty, generic answer.
I was not listening. Any monkey could've rattled off that list.
When the interviewer asked that question what he really wanted to know was: "Does this guy know what he is doing?"
A good listener would've unpacked the interviewer's question and learned what the interviewer was looking for:
"You know I haven't really thought about specific strategies. What's your biggest bottleneck right now in getting new clients on board?"
A good listener aims to understand deeply.
A bad listener misses the point.
Skill #2 - How to quickly find common interests (not the way you're thinking)
Don't get stuck in polite conversation. There's no "skin" invested in it. You've got to get at least a little bit naked (so to speak) in order to make friends with someone. Here's how you do it:
We humans have just 48 basic emotions, depending on which study you read: joy, trust, fear, surprise, sadness, disgust, anger and anticipation. Everything we experience triggers a combination of these basic emotions. There aren’t that many combinations.
We may not have experienced the same activities, but we have experienced the same emotions. So when I say you need to find common interests, I mean you need to find something that sparks similar emotions in both of you.
Say Felipe is studying to be an architect, and Manuela is studying to be a doctor. Felipe doesn’t care about medicine and Manuela doesn’t care about Architecture. They ask each other polite questions:
Felipe: Oh I hear you have to study for a long time to be a Doctor. How many years do you have left?
Manuela: Yeah, I’ve got another 2 years. 7 total. Although you never really stop learning. What do you want to design when you graduate?
Felipe: Bridges. I mainly want to design bridges. But I guess I’d be happy designing anything.
Manuela: Yeah I know what you mean, I just want to graduate already as well!
This is pretty boring, right? Neither of them are offering or asking for emotional information. You need to make an effort to understand them. This chitchat isn’t going to cut it.
At this level of conversation they have to keep thinking of new topics every few seconds. The ideas will dry up pretty soon. This is why conversations often feel like hard work. It’s much easier to pause and explore one topic for a while.
So here’s what you do...
You don’t just listen to respond. You listen to understand. You go deeper.
• Offer your own emotional information
• AND dig for their emotional information.
Keep digging until you understand their way of thinking. Until you feel the emotion they’re talking about. Then show them that you understand by sharing a similar experience of your own.
These questions are your friends:
• WHAT do you like about that?
• WHAT made you want that?
• WHAT scares you about that?
• Essentially any question that uncovers “What makes you feel that way?” or “What makes you think that way?”
WHAT tends to work better than WHY because WHAT feels like you’re curious and WHY can sometimes feel like an attack. “WHY do you like that?" “Because I do. What's your problem?!"
So back to Felipe and Manuela. Now that they know how to “listen to understand”, how does their conversation go?
Felipe: I mainly want to design bridges. But I guess I’d be happy designing anything.
Manuela: What do you like about designing bridges specifically?
Felipe: Well I haven't actually designed one yet, but for some reason I keep picturing myself standing on top of a huge bridge that I designed. I don’t know. It just makes me feel alive.
Manuela: Yeah that sounds pretty cool. What do you mean by ‘alive’ though?
Felipe: Hmm, well the bridge started as an idea in my head, and now I’m standing on it. It’s like having ultimate control over everything.
Manuela: Oh I know that feeling! That’s how I feel when I think of saving someone’s life at the last minute in the emergency room. Boom… Doctor Incontrol.
Felipe: Haha. Is that what made you decide to become a Doctor? Because you like feeling incontrol?
Manuela: Yeah, I guess it is.
Felipe: Wow. That’s the same reason I decided to be an architect. So does that mean you hate it when other people boss you around too?
Manuela: OMG that’s the worst!! I can’t stand it when other people tell me what to do.
Fun! Turns out they’re both control freaks. THAT’s their common interest. Now they can geek out on that instead of churning through countless emotionless topics that they don’t connect on.
Skill #3 - How to never run out of things to say
Imagine you have a conversational D-pad. It gives you something to say whenever you run out of things to say. These are the controls:
Say you’re in a conversation about cars, and you don’t know anything about cars. You run out of things to say. What are your options?
Some people prefer to zoom out. They think and talk about general things: ideas and concepts.
Some people prefer to zoom in. They think and talk about specific things: details and examples.
You’ve probably had conversations with people where you just don’t click with them. It could be because you prefer to zoom in and they prefer to zoom out, or vice versa.
Example
Elena: How was your day?
Pablo: Good. Productive. I got a lot done. How was yours?
Elena: Well! When I woke up I made toast, with butter and vegemite. I left it in the toaster a little too long and it got a bit burnt, but I scraped it off with a knife and it was fine. Then I cycled to work. I went down Oxford Street this time instead of my usual route down Henry Cotton Drive because I wanted a change.
My boss didn’t have anything for me to do today so I made an appointment to see the Doctor next Wednesday at 5pm and spent the rest of the day on Facebook chatting to Sofia about her baby, Ivan, who has a cold and Esteban about his new Porsche. Then I came home down Oxford Street again because it was so lovely in the morning. It wasn’t as nice in the evening. And now I’m talking to you.
Pablo: So was your day good or not?
Elena: I want to know what you did all day.
Pablo likes ideas and concepts (zoomed out). Elena likes details and examples (zoomed in).
Pablo is bored senseless by Elena’s details and Elena feels like Pablo doesn’t want to share things with her.
Pablo is interested in the big picture. He wants to understand the point of what Elena is telling him. What does it mean? Did she have a good day or a bad day?
Elena is interested in specifics. She wants to know what made Pablo’s day good or bad. What does he mean by ‘productive’? What did he get done?
If you find yourself in a conversation that just isn’t working you might be speaking to someone who has a different zoom preference. All you have to do to connect with them is zoom in or out to match their preference.
If they prefer to zoom in, give them details and examples. If they prefer to zoom out, give them the meaning behind your details and examples.
