Master Every Conversation
For the socially awkward.
Have you ever found yourself in a room, your eyes drawn to that one person who effortlessly captures everyone’s attention? They exude a natural charm, an authenticity that makes you want to know them. And then there’s the rest of us, navigating through conversations with a hint of awkwardness, fearing we might say the wrong thing. We've all been there. Lying in bed at night, replaying the conversations in our heads, wondering why we said what we did 🤦♂️.
🥜 In A Nutshell
Try to balance warmth and competence in your conversations.
It’s important to use names in conversations to build familiarity and rapport.
Showing engagement over entertainment in your conversations makes you more likeable and helps form stronger connections.
Conversational threading offers listeners more entry points to continue the dialogue.
🫀 The Anatomy Of Charisma
What is it about somebody that makes them so magnetic, charismatic and likeable?
Well, according to Vanessa V Edwards, who’s the author of the book I recently read called Cues:
Highly charismatic people rank high in two specific traits: warmth and competence.
— Vanessa V Edwards in Cues
But here’s the problem. Most of us have an imbalance between these two traits. We tend to be either more warm or more competent. But very few of us possess a good balance of both.
So, if you’re like me, you’re highly competent. You know that it has its perks. You come across as very competent. You’re seen as someone who is capable and respectable. Important people take you seriously. They listen when you’ve got something to say. But on the downside, you might come across as unapproachable or intimidating.
Conversely, if you’re highly warm, you come across as trustworthy, compassionate and friendly. Essentially, you’re approachable, and you make people feel comfortable. But the downside is this overwhelming warmth can sometimes overshadow your competence. It can leave others with the impression that you’re not particularly impressive or powerful.
So, in both cases, your strength can also be your weakness. What you’ll find is that charismatic people often have a good balance between warmth and competence.
In this edition of Hustle Heads, we will deep dive into some social skills that genuinely help people be more interesting and charismatic.
🎲 Name Of The Game
I’m naturally a very awkward person and one of the books that helped me to become a better communicator was How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. And one of the most impactful tips that I took away from that book is to use people’s names in conversations.
A person’s name is the sweetest and most important sound to them.
— Dale Carnegie in How to Win Friends and Influence People
It makes sense right? Our name has been a part of our identity since we were born. So using someone’s name in a conversation immediately creates familiarity and rapport. Casually using someone’s name in a conversation, it radiates warmth but also competence, like you remembered their name.
But if you’re anything like me and you have a very hard time remembering people’s names, this is where Carnegie gave another tip — to try and repeat the person’s name three times during your initial conversation with them, just to help commit it to memory.
So you could say something like this in your initial conversation:
You: Hey, what’s your name?
Person: Sanjay.
You: Oh, hey Sanjay! Nice to meet you, Sanjay. What does the name Sanjay mean?
Bam! I just said their name three times.
🤔 Be Interested
I used to feel so much pressure in social interactions. Pressured to say something interesting or that I had to be interesting until I learned this, again from Dale Carnegie.
Be interested. Not interesting.
— Dale Carnegie in How to Win Friends and Influence People
I think at its core, people will find you interesting if you find them interesting. All of us just want to feel acknowledged and listened to, and the best way to connect with somebody is to just truly care about what they’re saying. And you can show this through your actions by asking questions, by leaning in and using non verbal cues like smiling and nodding, to show them that you’re fully engaged in the conversation.
Now this is a crucial tip. If somebody shares with you that, for example, they love to paint. I think it can kind of be almost an instinct for us, to try and relate that story back to our own life. So you might say something like ‘Ah, my sister paints too’. While you might think that this creates a sense of shared experience, it can actually derail the conversation because it’s taking the story away from them and it’s turning it towards yourself.
So instead of following your connection to the subject, you can instead follow your curiosity. Ask them about their art. Whether they prefer acrylics or oils, ask them about their latest creation. Essentially this just gives them space to share more and it continues to show that you’re interested in them. Ultimately people will remember not what you did or what you said, but how you made them feel.
🧶 Conversation Threading
Now, when the conversation does turn to you, try to use something called conversational threading. This essentially means offering several threads or topics that the other person can hook on to, to keep the conversation rolling. For example, if someone were to ask what did you do this weekend, instead of saying ‘Uh, nothing. I just relaxed’, whch is innocent enough and it’s really okay to respond like that, if you don’t want the conversation to continue. But essentially if you do say that, it kind of shuts the conversation down.
So what you could try to say instead is ‘Oh, not much. I went for a hike. I tried a new sushi place and I also started reading this really great book’. You see, what this does, is it offers the other person several opportunities for what they can ask next. They could ask you where did you go hiking, what book are you reading etc. All in all, it just creates more opportunities to connect. It invites trust and it radiates warmth.
✨ Imperfect Is The New Perfect
In social interactions, we often feel like we need to be perfect, especially if we’re meeting somebody for the first time. But the truth is:
Striving for perfection can create distance.
It can make us seem inapproachable or inauthentic. In psychology, the Pratfall effect suggests that people become more likeable when they display some form of vulnerability or if they make a mistake, as long as they were generally competent to begin with.
For example, I started noticing this when I accidentally left minor errors and broken links in my newsletters. It took my newsletters from being very perfect and curated, to being a bit more human and relatable.
So obviously this isn’t about purposefully making mistakes or adopting flaws. It’s more about not hiding imperfections when they naturally come up. And let this take a whole lot of the pressure off. It means you can laugh when you’ve made a clumsy mistake. It means you can admit when you don’t know something genuinely. It makes you more relatable, more likeable and more endearing.
😇 What You Give Is What You Get
In psychology, there’s also this really interesting principle known as spontaneous trait transference. The idea is that if you describe somebody as hardworking or smart, whoever is listening to your story might associate you with those very traits. But the reverse is also true. If you label somebody as lazy or unreliable, you might find that you also get associated with those same labels.
Sometimes we feel that gossiping about somebody makes us more relatable and likeable because we’ve got the inside scoop. We’ve got some juicy details to share. But always remember:
If someone gossips to you, they’ll likely gossip about you too.
Subconsciously we might start to feel like that other person is not very trustworthy or that they’re not very kind. So this isn’t like a cautionary tale against gossiping, but more so just like a reminder that how we talk about others shapes how we ourselves are viewed. So if you’re going to chat about somebody else, try to speak about them positively. It’s also going to reflect positively on you.
✅ Self Assurance
You don’t need to be Elon Musk or have a PhD in mathematics to be seen as competent and interesting. I feel that every single one of us have skills and hobbies that we excel at, even if it’s something like cooking or crocheting. What seems mundane to you is definitely going to be fascinating to somebody else. So don’t underestimate your expertise. Own your skills and don’t shy away from sharing them in coversations either. It shows competence and confidence, whoch people are naturally drawn to.
When you appreciate your own unique qualities and you’re authentically engaged in your own life, you’re going to naturally exhibit a self-assured confidence that other people are going to find worthy of respect.
🌯 Wrapping Up
So becoming likeable and respected is not about some elusive X factor, it’s about balancing warmth and competency. Making other people feel at ease while also being authentically engaged in your own life. I think the most important tip of all is to go into a conversation with the intention of having fun rather than with the intention of saying I hope they like me.
Thank you for reading.
Sanjay.
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