Can you improve your conversation skills?
Certainly.
It might take a while to change the conversation habits that’s been ingrained throughout your life, but it is very possible.
To not make this article longer than necessary let’s just skip right to some common mistakes many of us have made in conversations and a couple of solutions.
And if you want more in-depth training then join us in my 12-week, step-by-step Smart Social Skills Course where I share the very best things I have learned in the past 8 years about improving social skills and relationship habits.
1. Not listening.
Ernest Hemingway once said:
“I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.”
Don’t be like most people. Don’t just wait eagerly for your turn to talk. Put your own ego on hold.
Stop being lazy in a conversation and learn to really listen to what people actually are saying. When you start to really listen, you’ll pick up on loads of potential paths in the conversation.
But avoid yes or no type of questions as they will not give you much information.
If someone mentions that they went fishing with a couple of friends last weekend you can for instance ask:
- Where did you go fishing?
- What do you like most about fishing?
- What did you do there besides fishing?
The person will delve deeper into the subject giving you more information to work with and more paths for you choose from.
If they say something like: “Oh, I don’t know” at first, don’t give up.
Prod a little further. Ask again.
They do know, they just have to think about a bit more. And as they start to open up the conversation becomes more interesting because it’s not on auto-pilot anymore.
2. Asking too many questions.
If you ask too many questions the conversation can feel like a bit of an interrogation. Or like you don’t have that much too contribute.
One alternative is to mix questions with statements.
Continuing the conversation above you could skip the question and say:
“Yeah, it’s great to just get out with your friends and relax over the weekend. We like to take a six-pack out to the park and play some Frisbee golf.”
Or you can say:
“Nice. We went out in my friend’s boat last month and I tried these new lures from Sakamura. The blue ones were really great.”
And then the conversation can flow on from there. And you can discuss Frisbee golf, the advantages/disadvantages of different lures or your favourite beer.
3. Tightening up.
When in conversation with someone you just meet or when the usual few topics are exhausted an awkward silence or mood might appear. Or you might just become nervous or worried not knowing exactly why.
Here’s three things you can do in such a situation:
Be on top of what’s happening out there.
Leil Lowndes once said: “Never leave home without reading the newspaper”. If you’re running out of things to say, you can always start talking about the current news.
It’s also good to stay updated on current water cooler-topics. Like what happened on the latest episode of Lost.
Use your surroundings.
Comment on the aquarium at the party, or that one girl’s cool Halloween-costume or the host’s mp3-playlist. You can always start new conversations about something in your surroundings.
Assume rapport.
If you feel nervous or weird when meeting someone for the first time assume rapport.
What that means is that you imagine how you feel when you meet one of your best friends. And pretend that this new acquaintance is one of your best friends.
Don’t overdo it though, you might not want to hug and kiss right away. But if you imagine this you’ll go into a positive emotional state.
And you’ll greet and start talking to this new person with a smile and a friendly and relaxed attitude.
Because that’s how you talk to your friends. It might sound a bit loopy or too simple.
But it really works.
4. Poor delivery.
One of the most important things in a conversation is not what you say, but how you say it.
A change in these habits can make a big difference since your voice and body language is a vital part of communication. Some things to think about:
- Slowing down. When you get excited about something it’s easy to start talking faster and faster. Try and slow down. It will make it much easier for people to listen and for you actually get what you are saying across to them.
- Speaking up. Don’t be afraid to talk as loud as you need to for people to hear you.
- Speaking clearly. Don’t mumble.
- Speak with emotion. No one listens for that long if you speak with a monotone voice. Let your feelings be reflected in your voice.
- Using pauses. Slowing down your talking plus adding a small pause between thoughts or sentences creates a bit of tension and anticipation.
- Learn a bit about improving your body language as it can make your delivery a lot more effective. Read about laughter, posture and how to hold your drink in 18 ways to improve your body language.
5. Hogging the spot-light.
I’ve been guilty of this one on more occasions than I wish to remember. :)
Everyone involved in a conversation should get their time in the spotlight. Don’t interrupt someone when they are telling some anecdote or their view on what you are discussing to divert the attention back to yourself.
Don’t hijack their story about skiing before it’s finished to share your best skiing-anecdote. Find a balance between listening and talking.
6. Having to be right.
Avoid arguing and having to being right about every topic. Often a conversation is not really a discussion.
It’s a more of a way to keep a good mood going. No one will be that impressed if you “win” every conversation.
Instead just sit back, relax and help keep the good feelings going.
7. Talking about a weird or negative topic.
If you’re at a party or somewhere where you are just getting to know some people you might want to avoid some topics.
Talking about your bad health or relationships, your crappy job or boss, serial killers, technical lingo that only you and some other guy understands or anything that sucks the positive energy out of the conversation are topics to steer clear from.
You might also want to save religion, money and politics for conversations with your friends.
8. Being boring.
Don’t prattle on about your new car for 10 minutes oblivious to your surroundings. Always be prepared to drop a subject when you start to bore people.
Or when everyone is getting bored and the topic is starting to run out of steam.
One good way to have something interesting to say is simply to lead an interesting life. And to focus on the positive stuff.
Don’t start to whine about your boss or your job, people don’t want to hear that.
Instead, talk about your last trip somewhere, some funny anecdote that happened while you were buying clothes, your plans for New Year’s Eve, your new blog or podcast project or something funny or exciting.
Another way is just to be genuinely interested.
As Dale Carnegie said:
“You can make more friends in two months by becoming really interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you. Which is just another way of saying that the way to make a friend is to be one.”
Knowing a little about many things or at least being open to talk about them instead of trying to steer the conversation back to your favorite subject is a nice quality.
Meaning: talking for what seems like hours about one topic.
Topics may include work, favorite rock-band, TV-show and more work.
Opening up a bit and not clinging desperately to one topic will make the conversation feel more relaxed and open. You will come across like a person who can talk about many things with ease.
As you’ve probably experienced with other people; this quality is something you appreciate in a conversation and makes you feel like you can connect to that person easily.
9. Not reciprocating.
Open up and say what you think, share how you feel.
If someone shares an experience, open up too and share one of your experiences. Don’t just stand there nodding and answer with short sentences.
If someone is investing in the conversation they’d like you to invest too. Like in so many areas in life, you can’t always wait for the other party to make the first move.
When needed, be proactive and be the first one to open up and invest in the conversation. One way is by replacing some questions with statements.
It makes you less passive and makes take a sort of stand.
10. Not contributing much.
You might feel that you don’t have much to contribute to a conversation. But try anyway.
Really listen and be interested in what the others are saying. Ask questions. Make relating statements.
Open your eyes too. Develop your observational skills to pick up interesting stuff in your surroundings to talk about.
Develop your personal knowledge-bank by expanding your view of interesting things in the world. Read the newspapers and keep an eye on new water cooler-topics.
Work on your body language, how you talk and try assuming rapport to improve your communication skills.
But take it easy. Don’t do it all at once. You’ll just feel confused and overwhelmed and start to doubt yourself.
Instead, pick out the three most important things that you feel needs improving. Work on them every day for 3-4 weeks. Notice the difference and keep at it.
Soon your new habits will start to pop up spontaneously when you are in a conversation.
Henrik Edberg is the creator of the Positivity Blog and has written weekly articles here since 2006. He has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Gothenburg and has been featured on Lifehacker, HuffPost and Paulo Coelho’s blog.
Comments on this entry are closed.
This is really informative to me because I make at least half of these mistakes and now I am self aware. Thanks
Excellent post!
http://www.inspirationforchange.com
This article is so desperately necessary for your readers. So many tech geeks and bloggers have such great minds and are very interesting people, but lack these basic tips to hold people’s interest in society. Awesome article :)
Hey ^^ I loved this topic, and I know its going to help me a little when I get stuck now. BUT I NEED MORE!!!
Where did you go fishing?
What do you like most about fishing?
What did you do there besides fishing.
Alright, these will help me out a little, but what if your at a party. What if your surrounded by tons of drunken idiots that break all the rules above, and conversational topics are beyond me. I am unfortunate enough to be extremely shy when I’m around a group of people and end up standing in a corner waiting for someone to rescue me. Sure, Ill walk up to someone, give them a big smile, ask them what brings them here, or what they think of all the crazy people in underwear walking around. Now imagine yourself where like me, you cant stand people who drink, and lose there heads in such places. I honestly want to fit in, I don’t want to drink, and I can never keep a conversation going for longer than 15 seconds there. Sure ill listen to what they say… but there drunken mind thinks of such unusually ignorant, and almost impossible to comprehend situations, its impossible to think about making the convo last longer.
Alright, then there was a couple days ago. I go on a date with this unimaginably cute girl, who loves to talk. Sure, she is really nice and everything, but she talks unbelievably fast, mixes in different languages half the time so you cant understand her, and changes the conversation every 10 seconds. How am I supposed to even try to talk to her. I felt like a total loser around her, and not to lower my self esteem, I feel to afraid to even call her now(go Yahoo) ^^. I would think that if she is such a great social person, I would be able to talk to her easier. I am horrible at making a conversation out of the spur of a moment. Then… she feels sick at the end of the day, so I end up taking her home an hour early than normal… Then I get all these random images that she probably hates to be around me now… I feel like I want to find a nice shy girl, who rarely ever talks, and who I cant find existing in Las Vegas.
Any advice on what I should do, or how I can learn to talk more, and create conversation topics easier would be very helpful. For the record, my memory sucks, especially when I’m talking to new, or random people. I think my thought pattern is like “omg.. what do I say” “BREATH!” “2+2=4”
Eh.. sorry for the unusually long topic.. I figured there… might be other people that have the same problems, so I hope it can help them out as well, and make your conversation topic even better than it already is.
Not that its important, thats exactly the same problem that I have is that I cant think of anything to say and after the usually “hey whats new” I get nervous and just say random shit and that the other person thinks im a bird. But anyways goodluck and I know youll find a solution to your problem!!
Another potential problem if you are quite shy is being too self aware during the conversation. Having random thoughts going through your head like:
‘Am I being boring’ or ‘Does this person even like me’ can throw you off course. This usually makes it difficult to maintain eye contact as you don’t want to face up to the truth of their expression.
I think I’ve read the topic somewhere before, but I find it ‘easy to say, but not easy to do’, really. People who are brilliant conversationalist will say this is the way, but people like me who are not used to it, boy, it’s not an easy thing to do. In other words, I think only those who has no problem at all will not find it any difficult to follow, but to a person who seldom ever have the chance to talk at all, it’s really tough to be any better. Do you agree?
In the “Best of The Positivity Blog” and I think in the whole Eriks blog I have no problems only with this topic in my life. How come a person who has such big problems with bad habits and all other mistakes, has no problem to talk to a crowd, to unknown people, relax dozen of co-workers, make a sad party to one that doesn’t ends etc. I think it’s because I can “cure” in many situations others but I have a personal blockade (like 7 Habits of Highly Ineffective People), that freezes me. I can talk briefly like a guru, and so what, if I take no action only my competition does, and benefit from it.
GOOD NEWS: I am building my self-esteem, goals, lifestyles changes on top of that. With all that subconscious changes through consciousness changes in my mind. I will do it, despite the fear.
If the problem isn’t yours it’s impossible to understand others, my brother has big conversation problems, now I understand him bit more. The simplest (but painfull) cure to ALL these problems is do what you hate as often as possible – soon your problem will disappear, and maybe become after a while your second nature – wish me good luck, and good luck to all of you.
Thanx
I think thinking too much about what your going to say is what gets most people into boring cnnversations. The only way to learn from that is to listen first then reply with your honest opinion about a certain topic. then im sure people would listen to what you have to say or ask. Nobody will think what you say is invalid or stupid its what you make it out to be. Just having a more confident attitude will help. How are you going to get people interested in you when you dont believe yourself.
hey :-)
its very reasonable article.
Nice post.
realy gj
thank you ;)
great article. it actually addressed several ares in my life that feel blunt. Most times people are mistaken as introverts
nice advice thanks i’m going to look at this site again on friday and then use these tips at a party
I use weird topics to break social norms. I am a leader though, so it works for me.
Taiji for example is designed to make the colon work. So, naturally, we must speak about farting.
It’s a great website for all persons in globa.Thanks u
all.
This is all excellent advice that many of us could benefit from. I think the most important one is to listen. It’s amazing how many of us are just waiting for our turn to speak. I struggle with this myself. Really listening to another person is so important.
I know that you have listened to this phrase many times, but here is once more just “BE YOURSELF” it always works out, because no matter how nice or handsome could be the person you want to like everybody loves originality and honesty. But, this is a tip you do not have to forget while you are having a conversation “do not be in silence” I mean try to ask whatever, because if you stay in silence, then you would have some troubles to start a new conversation, then evereything is spontaneous. BE HAPPY!!!!!!:).