The Foundations of a Great Conversation
So let’s turn to the foundations of a great conversation. These are the
building blocks on top of which you’re going to build your actual
conversation itself. If you don’t have these, all your conversations will be a
little stilted and go awry. You have to make sure your conversations are
natural and they come from inside of you, otherwise you are creating
something artificial and people can tell. It doesn’t really sit right with them.
The basics
Now, the first things to make sure that you do – and these are so important
because they create the context, the atmosphere in which everything else
will take place – is to make sure you keep the basics firmly in mind.
The basics are:
Smile
Number 1, smile. People who smile project a sense of friendliness and
warmth, and there’s all kinds of studies that show that people will like
people who smile way more than people who have a normal expression on
their face, let alone a frown.
Friendly eye contact
The next thing to do is to make sure you maintain a friendly eye contact. A
lot of people put a great deal of value on simple friendly eye contact.
Now, make sure you’re not glaring at them at the same time. Make sure
you’re not fixing your eyes on them and never actually departing. The key
to eye contact is maintain a friendly eye contact, hold it for a while and then,
every now and again, look away casually and then come back again.
Make sure those looks away aren’t when you’re saying something important,
because otherwise people will unconsciously begin to feel that you’re maybe
being dishonest at that point. Just let your, your gaze casually drift around
the room, and then come back again to the other person. It should be a
very relaxed and natural movement.
Friendly mannerisms
Now, you should make sure to have a friendly air about you, a friendly
manner around you. This will really color all of your interactions with other
people.
Don’t try too hard!
And related to that, finally in the basics, remember, don’t try too hard. If
you try too hard you could come across as needy or desperate, and it has
the opposite effect on people. Rather than bringing them closer to you, it
tends to push them away a little bit.
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