People Skills

Eduard March 17, 2011

How to Be More Outgoing

If you’re somewhat shy or introverted, then learning how to be more outgoing is one of the smartest self-improvement steps you can make. There is no better way to solidify your social life than by comprehending how to be more outgoing and applying it

In my social confidence coaching practice, I frequently teach people how to be more outgoing and social, and I help them make real life progress in this area. I’ve realized that being social is much more a matter of attitude than aptitude, and that the attitude part needs to be handled above all.

Step 1: Outgoing = Out Going

One potentially illuminating way that I like to look at the word ‘outgoing’ is by dividing the two composing words and making it ‘out going’.

You could take that phrase literally, as in going out of the house more; because many of the individuals who aren’t very outgoing and social spend unordinary amounts of time indoors, alone, and this feeds their shyness.

However, to me it makes more sense to look at it figuratively. Thus, being ‘out going’ means putting your personality out there instead of keeping it hidden, it means expressing yourself fully.

There are multiple things you can do to achieve this. I recommended you start by watching my free presentation on Conversation Confidence. This insightful presentation will reveal to you the real key to gaining confidence and the proven formula for being more outgoing. Go here to check it out.

To assist you understand how to be more outgoing, I will list here some of the most effective ways that I know. These are ways I’ve used myself, and are recurrently used by my coaching clients.

Step 2: Break It Down and Then Put It into Practice

Do you know this joke: How do you eat an elephant? One piece at a time. Well, this concept applies extremely well for becoming more outgoing and sociable.

When you get frustrated with having few fulfilling friendships, it’s temping to just try to burst out and instantly become that super-sociable person you want to be. Unfortunately, human psychology doesn’t work that way. You don’t just change completely at once.

Real, organic change in how sociable you are happens by setting gradual steps for being more outgoing, and taking these steps one by one. For example, you may start by asking more questions in group settings, and when you become comfortable with that, you continue with making more statements in group settings.

In time, step by step, you’ll eventually find yourself becoming a lean, mean, socializing machine. In learning how to be more outgoing and social, it’s crucial to understand that this gradual process is what works best and to stick to it dutifully.

Step 3: Lower The Bar

One trait most shy people have in common is that they set lofty social standards for themselves. They demand of themselves to make a great first impression, to be liked by all, and they think that if it doesn’t happen it’s a tragedy.

Even individuals with very sharp social skills can’t rise up to such idealistic standards. Shy people only torment themselves by imposing this kind of standards on themselves.

For this reason, one of the best things you can do to become more outgoing is to lower the bar. If your standard for success is to get everybody to like you, then you’re bound to be shy. But if your standard is simply to have conversations with new people, then you’re bound to be more sociable.

The vital thing you may need to realize is that you don’t have to demand that much of yourself socially. You’re only human, you will connect well with some people, you won’t connect with others at all, and that’s absolutely OK. Accept it and live your life.

Step 4: Manage Your Self-Talk

I have a (rhetorical) question for you: How does a person set the social bar high for themselves?

The answer is that they do so through their self-talk. They say to themselves in their inner dialog “I must impress this person; they must like me” and other intelligent stuff like that.

Well, people who aren’t very outgoing tend to have many other dysfunctional ways of talking to themselves than the ones that create unrealistic standards. If you analyze their inner dialog, you’ll discover that it’s full of crap.

Thus, in learning how to be more outgoing and social, a very big step is managing your self-talk. This means identifying the stupid, unrealistic or dysfunctional things that you say to yourself and willingly correcting them. I talk in more detail about this in my confidence video presentation.

As you do so in a systematic way, not only that your habitual self-talk changes, but the underlying beliefs change as well. This helps you gain confidence and interact easier with other people.

As you become more outgoing, your people skills get put into practice more and they develop as well. This makes you even more outgoing and you get a positive cycle going, which ends up visibly enriching your social life. And the best part is that in this entire journey, the sky is the limit.

Image courtesy of NicoleAbalde

Filed Under: Attitude, People Skills, Relationships Tagged With: be, how, more, outgoing 60 Comments

Eduard March 14, 2011

How to Meet People

Make no mistake about it: knowing how to meet people is a skill that will, depending on your case, either save or enrich your social life. Like most of us, you may live in a huge human settlement, but that doesn’t necessarily make meeting new people easy.

The essential benefit of knowing how to meet people effectively is that it gives you a lot more social options. Thus, you don’t have to settle for a crummy bunch of friends or to fool yourself that playing a MMORPG equals having a social life.

Meet People Proactively

Wouldn’t you love having a way to meet new people with barely any effort, from the comfort of your own home, and build fulfilling relationships? Well, I have news for you:

There isn’t any! You’re daydreaming!

The essential trait to master in learning how to meet people effectively is a proactive attitude. It means taking responsibility for your social life and acting in the outside world in order to meet people, instead of waiting for them to act and meet you.

I know that meeting people online is taking ground, and there are specific ways you can meet people successfully online. But that doesn’t mean that overall, it’s an effective method. It’s mostly proof that we’re looking for quick fixes.

Overall, if you want to make friends and enhance your social life, you’ll have to:

Get out of the house more;
Go to places where there are other folks who are eager to interact socially;
Start conversations, be friendly and outgoing;
Make conversation with people face to face.

Where to Meet People

Fortunately, there’s a plethora of methods and places to meet new people. Unfortunately, not all of them are that effective.

I’ve tested quite a few of them and my communication coaching clients have tested even more of them. Condensing these experiences, I believe there are at least three ways to meet people that are worth using:

1. Classes and trainings. Whatever it is that you fancy learning, there are probably a lot of people in your vicinity who want to learn it as well: from cooking to photography, from communication skills to playing the harmonica.

Taking a class or going to a training program on a topic that interests you is one of the best ways to meet new people. I personally use this method all the time and many of my best friends I’ve met in various classes and trainings.

2. Sports and physical activities. Every year I see more and more nuts (aaa… people) jogging passed me on the street; and many of them are in pairs. In general, exercising is becoming increasingly popular and it’s taking on an increasingly social form.

So the answer to the question “how to meet people?” might be for you to take on a sport that’s social in nature (translation: it involves more than one person). Think tennis, basketball, hiking, running, dancing, etc. There are organized groups, associations, and local communities in many sports, and they’re usually looking for new members.

3. Volunteer work. This is an excellent way to meet like-minded people who believe in the same causes you do. Most of the people who do volunteer work are not there just to make a contribution, but also to socialize.

Think about the things you would like to volunteer for and start searching for groups or organizations in your area that do those kinds of deeds. Get in touch with them and start getting involved in their events and activities.

Find Out What Works For You

Besides the ways to meet people that tend to work for nearly everyone, there are even more ways that work for particular types of individuals.

Learning how to meet people in church and applying it might be great for you if you’re a highly religious person. Learning how to meet people in bars and clubs might be great for you if you’re not a highly religious person.

What I encourage my coaching clients to do and I encourage you as well is to test it out. Experiment with various methods of meeting new people and be willing to get out of your comfort zone.

Eventually, you’ll find those ways to meet people that best fit your personality and you can focus on them. Learning how to meet people may also require you to make some adjustments to your personality and improve your people skills, but it will be worth it.

What you don’t want to do is act as if what works for others to meet people won’t work for you without giving it a shot, and to settle for a minutely exciting social life.

You live in a world with more possibilities for meeting new people and having great relationships than ever. The only person that could possibly stand in your way is you.

Image courtesy of CraigMarston

Filed Under: Lifestyle, People Skills, Relationships Tagged With: how, meet, people 4 Comments

Eduard March 9, 2011

Toxic Relationships and Navigating Them

One of my tenets is this: life is too short to waste it dealing with poisonous people and having toxic relationships.

If you believe you may have one or more toxic relationships in your life, then one of the key people skills for you to master is recognizing and managing such relationships.

In my work as a communication coach, I often help my clients navigate through and beyond toxic relationships. I can tell you than acquiring the proper skills and attitudes to do this is not an easy process, but if you share the above tenet with me, you’ll definitely find in worth your while.

Toxic Relationships Signs

Toxic relationships can be present in any area of your life. You may have a toxic relationship with your spouse, your GF/BF, your parents, your boss, a friend, a colleague or a business partner.

Before anything else, you need to be able to look the monster in the eye and name it. In other words, you need to recognize toxic relationships and acknowledge them if they exist in your life. The following are in my view the top five signs of a toxic relationship:

1. Lack of balance. One person gives, the other receives. One person invests, makes sacrifices and compromises for the sake of the relationship, the other person takes, expects and demands compromises.

2. Heavy criticism. Any relationship where at least one partner spends significantly more time criticizing, accusing and putting down the other partner than praising and supporting him or her is a toxic relationship.

3. Emotional manipulation. If in a relationship you often feel pressured to do certain things, if the other person frequently uses shame, guilt, fear or anger as tools to push your buttons and direct your behavior, you’re in a toxic relationship.

4. Persistent anxiety. Your mood while interacting with a person is a good sign of the dynamic that relationship has. If you frequently feel anxious or tense while interacting with a person, or even just thinking about it, the relationship is toxic.

5. Disrupting your growth. Healthy relationships help every area of your life flourish. Toxic relationships do the exact opposite. Toxic relationships in your family life make you unfocused and unproductive at work; toxic relationships in your career make you distant and cranky when at home.

Measure any relationship based on these five signs and you’ll get a pretty good idea about the number of toxic relationships in your life. Once you discover any, the next step is to decide if the best way to go is to try and save them, or to end them.

Ending Toxic Relationships

Now, once they fully realize they’re in a toxic relationship, many people have the instinctual reaction to try and fix it. They think it is the noble and proper thing to do. After all, we get preached to all the time on how relationships require compromises and we should fight for them.

Well, that may sound dignified, but the fact it that it’s often not the best path to take. Here’s one essential thing I came to realize as a communication coach: most of the time, you’re much better off ending toxic relationships than trying to save them.

It may be emotionally hard to do so, but trust me: in terms of costs and benefits, the best thing you can do is in all probability to end it without even thinking twice.

As a strategy for ending toxic relationships, I typically recommend biting the bullet and going all the way. Don’t try to distance yourself gradually from the other person and to play it all safe. It usually won’t work and it will cause you a whole lot of trouble.

Have a serious discussion with the other person and tell them: “Look! This relationship is not working for me. It’s causing me huge distress. I’m ending it”.

The other person will likely try to fight you on your decision and manipulate you into not ending the relationship. Keep in mind that it’s your choice, that you don’t need the other person’s consent to end the relationship, and stick to your decision.

Fixing Toxic Relationships

OK: if you truly believe that a toxic relationship in your life can be fixed and for some practical reason, trying to save it is a good idea, then by all means go ahead and try and fix it.

The essential concept you need to understand if you walk this path is that toxic relationships are co-created. Thus, saving it can only be done if both parts are willing to change. Overall, saving a toxic relationship involves three key steps:

1. An honest and straightforward expression, by both persons involved, of their needs, wants, opinions and frustrations related to their relationship. Honest, open communication is crucial in the healing process.

2. Acknowledging each others rights and responsibilities. If one person refuses to admit the other person’s needs and wants (often different from theirs) and to take them into consideration, there is no saving for the relationship.

3. Working towards a win-win solution. Once both sides of the story have been expressed, heard and accepted, the two parts need to collaborate to find the mutually advantageous solutions, and to rebuild their relationship based on them.

Effectively handling toxic relationships is not a matter of using a few simple tricks and tricks. It’s a matter of gaining confidence and developing key people skills for building healthy relationships. It’s an inside-out journey that begins with you and ends with your relationships.

Image courtesy of CowGummy

Filed Under: People Skills, Psychology, Relationships Tagged With: navigating, relationships, them, toxic 6 Comments

Eduard March 5, 2011

How to Make People Like You

Let’s face it: we’re all social animals and we want to be liked by others. That’s perfectly fine, as long as you don’t become desperate for people’s approval and feel shitty when someone doesn’t like you. It’s cool to want to know how to make people like you.

One of the central benefits of having good people skills is that you can increase your likeability factor. And the more likeable you can be my friend, the more options you have in your social life and beyond.

I’ve always been amazed by the ability to sweep people off their feet with your very presence. It’s one of the things that got me into improving my people skills more than a decade ago, and later into helping others do the same through communication coaching.

During this time, I’ve learned a thing or two on how to make people like you.

How Not To Make People Like You

girl There is one way to make people like you that’s very popular and I’m adamantly against. That is being really nice with people and doing nice things for them all the time. Sure, you can get some people’s approval be being a nice guy or a nice girl. However, there are huge downsides to this strategy.

First of all, as many nice people exemplify, having a nice behavior towards others all the time often projects neediness and insecurity. That doesn’t make someone like you, it makes them either avoid you (if you’re lucky) or use you (if you’re unlucky).

Second of all, in order to keep people’s appreciation with this strategy, you have to keep doing nice things for them. Eventually, all the effort you put into pleasing the people in your life by being nice turns into a huge pain in the ass for you.

Want to know how to make people like you in the best way possible? Make them like you for who you are, not for what you do for them. This idea is a huge mental shift for many and it puts the focus on developing edgy people skills and a charismatic personality, not on being nice all the time.

Be a Positive Presence

It is a psychological fact that emotions are contagious, both positive and negative ones. When you can make people feel good, in a way they reward you for this by liking you.

Interestingly enough, the most effective way to make others feel good is not by giving them cheesy compliments or shallow encouragements, but by being positive yourself. Therefore, learning how to make people like you goes hand in hand with learning how to manage your emotional state.

A very helpful exercise for getting yourself in a positive state is simply faking it. You see, in your psychology, everything is connected: your thoughts, your emotions and your body. Walk, move and talk like a person feeling good and you’ll elicit that very state. You’ll feel positive because you act positive, and you’ll transmit it to others.

Share Yourself

There is some fascinating research emerging lately in the field of social psychology that points out one of the simplest and most powerful answers to how to make people like you is to open up and share yourself.

Not only that we tend to feel more comfortable with people who share themselves, but we also like them more. Thus, it’s not surprising that timid people are often not very likeable. They don’t put themselves out there.

Listening is a very important people skill to have, but so is opening up. Talk about yourself; put yourself out there in an authentic manner, even if you may find it hard at first. You’ll notice how people will grab on to what they know about you and like you more.

If you have a hard time sharing yourself, it’s probably because you lack social confidence. In this case, all I can say is watch this presentation, because you’ll learn from me in it how to overcome this problem, permanently.

Add Value in Every Conversation

There is a much better mode to add value in people’s lives than being very nice. It’s through the style you make conversation. Want you want is for people to end a conversation with you better off than they were when they started it.

There are many ways to do this. You can be the wise person who inspires others and talks about interesting things, you can be the funny person who gives a humorous spin to everything and gets people laughing.

Find the ways of adding value in conversation that fit well with your personality and develop those. Ultimately, people want to interact the most with those who can offer value, and by being a funny, witty, exciting or wise person you have an endless stream of value you can provide effortlessly.

Knowing how to make people like you permits you to develop very sharp people skills. When you can push people’s buttons through your personality, you open the doors towards a lifestyle of abundance that most people only dream of.

Image courtesy of Kam

Filed Under: People Skills, Psychology, Success Tagged With: how, like, make, people, you 25 Comments

Eduard February 15, 2011

What Makes a Good Manager?

Make no mistake about it: effective management is a challenge. There are many managers, but there are few good managers. I believe the foundation of becoming a good manager is, first of all, understanding what makes a good manager.

In my communication coaching work, I often help managers identify and develop key management skills. In my experience, most managers only have a vague and inaccurate idea of what makes a good manager and in what direction to take their growth.

I’ll often hear statements from managers such as: “I need to improve my communication skills”. Well, there are a lot of communication skills. Which ones specifically? This is the kind of question you can answer much better by knowing yourself and comprehending what makes a good manager.

The 6 Qualities of a Good Manager

I have pinpointed six skills that I consider essential for any person who manages people and projects. Interestingly enough, five of them are people skills. Here are the six essential skills, listed and explained:

1. Clear Communication

As a manager, it’s crucial to aid make the flow of information clear and effective. This can be done by having a clear-cut style of communication, by using accurate words to express facts and ideas, and also assisting the people you work with to do the same.

If as a manager, you say to a member of your team “I want that sales report soon” when what you want to say is “I want that sales report tomorrow by 12PM”, you’re in trouble. A clear communication style defines good management at its roots.

2. Assertive Communication

This is one of my favorite communication skills, and for good reason: I see it as the fundamental communication skill for both managers and employees.

Assertive communication is the ability to express your thoughts, ideas, wants and emotions in a straightforward, non-hesitant way, while also being tactful and respectful of the other person.

Communicating assertively often starts with mastering the previous skill, but it goes way beyond this. It means creating a win-win blend in the communication with a wide range of individuals, which is very powerful and, unfortunately, very rare.

3. Creating a Connection

Business may ultimately be about results, but it is still an exchange between individuals and it has a very human component. Thus, an important part of what makes a good manager is their ability to connect with others, to build rapport and trust.

Good managers know how to be authentic, open and friendly with other people, especially their subordinates. They demonstrate interest in others and they can make interpersonal interactions informal and relaxed. Thus, others find it highly enjoyable to work with them or for them.

4. Integrity

This is a part of building a connection and trust that’s so important I felt the need to describe it separately. Integrity is the alignment between thoughts, words and actions. A manager with a lot of integrity is the one who says what they think and does what they say they’ll do.

As a result, the subordinated employees know they can count on their manager and it’s easy for them to trust their manager. Team transparency, constructive attitudes and performance naturally arise from there. And if you’re wondering why such conditions are so rare in many organizations, it is because high integrity is also rare.

5. Motivational Skills

No, I’m not talking about doing Tony Robbins style speeches in front of the team, although they may have their place and their worth. I’m talking about the more subtle managerial ability to understand people’s motivations and properly respond to them.

A manager with this quality is able to match the motivations and strengths with the tasks and compensations for each one of their employees. Considering the uniqueness of each employee and the structural complexity an organization can have, this is quite the skill to master.

6. Decision Making Skills

I see a big part of the manager’s role as putting together a puzzle. The pieces of the puzzle are people, tasks, goals and data. Assembling them means creating strategies, distributing tasks, supervising their execution and providing feedback.

All of these managerial activities involve a lot of decision making, and it is first-rate decision making skills that lead to the best decisions. A good manager needs to think rationally, analyze variables effectively and strategize with skill. Otherwise, when the puzzle is finished, there will still be unused pieces.

Taking into account all the qualities described above, I’m sure you realize that what makes a good manager is serious stuff. Good management is no child’s play. For this reason more than anything else, I think it’s best for managers to never get too cocky about their skills and to continually invest in their self-growth.

PS: I now blog and share advice over here. Connect with me.

Image courtesy of MyTudut

Filed Under: Career, People Skills, Success Tagged With: good, makes, manager, what 7 Comments

Eduard February 6, 2011

How to Make Friends

I am a firm advocate of a rich social life, in terms of quantity and quality. I believe that knowing how to make friends is one of the most important people skills one can master.

Most of the people I know who are truly happy with their lives nourish it with meaningful relationships and social interactions. These have more contribution to their happiness than just about any other external factor, money, fame and power included.

The Why and What of Making Friends

Taking your understanding of how to make friends to the next level is something I believe will benefit you no matter who you are and in what life context. However, it will interest you particularly if:

You have recently moved to a new town or country where you don’t know anybody and you’re starting your social life fresh;
You don’t have a lot of friends, maybe you’re somewhat shy, and you want to meet new people and make more friends;
You’ve realized that the friends you have right now are not the kind of people you really resonate with and want to shift your social circle;
You already have great friends but you want to keep improving your social life and turn it into a gem.

In my work as a communication coach, I often help clients to overcome shyness, enhance their people skills, learn how to make friends and effectively put this knowledge into practice.

In time, I have developed a 3-step system for making friends that I am proud to say, provides reliable results. As long as you apply it, you focus on constantly growing your people skills and you stick to it, you will see your social life thrive.

Step 1: Get Into Social Activities

Many persons ask me how they can meet new people in order to make friends. There is one way I always recommend for its elegance and effectiveness: social activities.

Basically, social activities are things you do along with other people or in the same group with other people. They get you interacting with others or they create a context where interacting with others can happen relatively easily and smoothly.

From martial arts to social dancing, from cooking classes to personal development trainings, these are all examples of social activities. Since in such activities you train with a partner, you share experience with others and so on, this means many social interactions will naturally happen.

When choosing social activities, keep in mind to pick the kind that you believe you may actually enjoy. It doesn’t make a lot of sense taking up team jogging when you can’t even stand breaking a sweat. Using your head in making social decisions and in learning how to make friends will get you a lot further than randomly filling your social calendar.

Step 2: Get Sociable

Social activities will certainly create the social context you need to successfully interact with others, but it will not get you friends on its own. Your next step is to take social initiative.

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This means deliberately interacting with people in abundance during social activities and employing such activities for social bonding. You want to model the social behaviors of very sociable people, behaviors such as:

Using almost any reason to talk with other people in a social activity;
Talking about themselves and revealing themselves to others;
Being authentically curious and asking others questions;
Escalating from small talk and making conversations more meaningful;
Having a fun, positive and social vibe;
Not taking things too seriously.

If you’re not used to behaving like this it will be a stretch for you; and stretching socially is one of the probably the key things you need to do at this point to make friends and enrich your social life.

Being sociable is in fact both an attitude and a skill. So if you want to master it and learn how to make friends successfully, you will probably have to work at both ends: gain social confidence and initiative and at the same time improve your conversation skills.

By the way: I have a special video presentation for you in which I reveal the 3-step solution for gaining social confidence, which you’ll simply love. Go here to watch it right now.

Step 3: Generate Future Interactions

When two or more people interact frequently and they get along well, if they are socially confident, they no longer let the context give them occasions to interact, they generate such occasions on their own.

You can invite another person out for a coffee, to have lunch together, to go for a drink and so on. A recent coaching client of mine decided to throw small, daytime house parties at her place in order to further interact with people she had met at various hobbies. She found this kind of a social event to work incredibly well for her.

Where you invite other people is not the most important element; actually having this initiative is. As such interactions take place, provided they go well, this is when the bond gets stronger and friendships truly emerge.

This is the general blueprint you can use to learn how to make friends and improve your social life. As you put it into practice and focus on continuously improving your people skills, I can assure you that the outcomes in your social life will be very good.

Even more, as your social life will improve, you will also see many other areas of your life blossom. Rich meaningful relationships with others can have such an amazing effect.

Image courtesy of ohhector

Filed Under: Lifestyle, People Skills, Relationships Tagged With: friends, how, make 4 Comments

Eduard February 1, 2011

How to Start a Conversation

Some people seem to naturally know how to start a conversation. They can kickoff conversations anywhere, from a party, to a seminar, to a queue at the supermarket. I’ve always admired these rare people.

On the other hand, working as a social confidence coach, I often meet people who don’t know how to start a conversation and struggle with this, either all around or in particular types of situations.

Learning how to start a conversation easily and effectively has been one of the key points in developing my people skills, and this is a big part of why I also enjoy teaching it.

Forget What You Thought You Knew About Starting a Conversation

Chances are, you already have a baggage of concepts on how to start a conversation from word of mouth, family education, books and articles.

My first recommendation in order to boost your conversation skills is to leave them behind, because most of them probably come from limiting mindsets. I’m talking about mindsets that overemphasize the importance of politeness or make impressing others the conversational priority.

I find that most advice on how to start a conversation makes you come off either rigid and insecure (at best) or creepy (at worst). So I’m going to take you into a somewhat different frame for starting conversations.

I think you first need to get a good idea of how to develop your conversation confidence. Once you get the attitude component handled, starting conversations with anyone becomes a walk in the park.

Check out my instructional presentation on this topic on this page, which will teach you a simple, 3-step formula for developing your conversation confidence.

The Golden Rule: Be Friendly

Forget about impressing people right off the bat when you start a conversation. You’ll have plenty of time to impress with your slick, charming self. I have one golden rule for starting a conversation and that is to be, or at least appear, friendly.

Your goal is not to impress, it is to show that you are a relaxed and sociable person who wants to have an enjoyable chat. That’s the best way to engage another person in a conversation.

When I work with my clients to help them improve the way they initiate a conversation, we focus on developing a friendly vibe more than anything else. And a friendly vibe is demonstrated mostly by your non-verbals.

So instead of focusing on coming up with clever conversation starters that will instantly woo the other person, focus on:

Smiling and holding eye contact;
Breathing regularly and relaxing your body;
Keeping your posture open and non-threatening.

Ask Good Questions

One of the most important tools for engaging another person in a conversation is your curiosity. Your curiosity best manifests itself in the way you ask questions, which is one people skill I think is critical.

First of all, you want to ask big, open-ended questions that require more than a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer and create for the other person the context to really talk about themselves.

Secondly, you don’t want to stick with the typical questions as conversation starters just because other people do so. The questions you ask, in my view, should be authentic and reflect your honest interests. You have much better chances of taking a conversation somewhere by putting your real interests forward.

Yes, Preparation Is Fine

If you struggle with starting conversations with some people or in some contexts, it’s OK to use conversation starters you’ve learned ahead of time and practiced before. Equipped with good conversation starters, you will have a tool for engaging people and you will feel more at ease.

However, it’s really dangerous to become depended on lines and conversation starters. This instructional presentation on conversation confidence I made explains why. If you have trouble starting conversations, it’s a must to check it out.

On the other hand keep in mind that at a certain point, as your conversation and people skills sharpen, memorized conversations starters are best to be left behind. Furthermore, remember that good conversation starters reflect your authentic curiosity. They’re not lines you use robotically; they’re adjusted to you and to the social context.

A Conversation Is a Two-Way Street

I often find that lots of people hesitate to talk about themselves, especially at the beginning of a conversation. They may believe it’s impolite or they may not be comfortable with opening up, so they choose to bombard the other person with questions as an alternative.

Nobody wants to feel like they’re in an interrogatory when they’re having a conversation: What do you do? Where do you live? Where do you work? Where are you from? What hobbies do you have? That is too many questions for two minutes of conversation.

Study people who are able to start conversations with ease in a semi-obsessive-compulsive manner like I did, and you’ll notice they are very open and talkative, and they have something to say about almost anything. This is why I believe that learning how to start a conversation is an exercise in opening up more.

If I were to synthesize how to start a conversation in one concise phrase, it would be this: have a combination of friendliness, curiosity, authenticity and verve. This mix is an almost magical key which opens many doors in social interactions. And more open doors mean more options.

Image courtesy of Batara

Filed Under: Communication Skills, People Skills Tagged With: conversation, how, start, to 16 Comments

Eduard January 10, 2011

How to Overcome Shyness

Almost fifty percent of people describe themselves as shy. If it didn’t have such dire consequences on ones life, shyness would almost be a fashionable thing. However, it does have bad effects and this is why knowing how to overcome shyness is important.

Finding the Needle in the Haystack

Do a search on the web for ‘how to overcome shyness’ and you’ll discover thousands of articles and ten times more tips on this topic. Try to put them into practice and sadly, you’ll also discover that much of the advice on how to overcome shyness is vague, impractical or just plain wrong.

Doing social confidence coaching with people with shyness, I’ve realized that there’re only a handful of ideas and techniques which provide consistent and powerful results in overcoming shyness. I want to share the most effective ones with you.

Overcoming Shyness Starts with Stretching

No, not physical stretching, but emotional. Here’s the thing: it is common for us human beings to stick to doing what is easy and comfortable for us. Thus, many shy people, because they don’t feel comfortable around other people, will tend to isolate themselves.

They will spend many hours alone, watching TV, playing computer games and secretly fantasizing about a better social life. This only works against them because it reinforces their shyness and makes the people skills they may have atrophy.

Learning how to overcome shyness starts with doing the opposite: gradually getting more out of the house, exposing yourself more to social situations and interacting more with people. Since this may feel uncomfortable at first, it’s a form of emotional stretching.

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Stretching yourself and interacting more with people works great because it gets you used to social situations and the social anxiety starts to drop. Also, your people skills steadily improve and that’s how to gain confidence.

Get Some Accurate Feedback

Working with shy people or people with an inferiority complex, I often notice that they have a hugely distorted image of themselves and how they come across to others. They usually think they are weird and that other people realize this in the very first seconds of talking with them.

If you are somewhat shy, getting some accurate feedback about your social persona from other people will be highly valuable for you in overcoming shyness. It will help you get your feet on the ground by realizing you’re an OK person.

What you basically do is ask a number of people who know you and trust about the way they see you. You can ask them a few questions about the qualities and the flaws they see in you, about the first impression you create and so on.

You can ask them all of this in a relaxed conversation, or you can request them to give you feedback using an anonymous feedback form. Feel free to test various methods.

Cut Down Mind-Reading

Mind-reading is the process of trying to figure out what a person thinks or how they feel by reading subtle cues in their behavior, words, voice tone or body language.

However, since these signals are hard to interpret accurately and shy people often exaggerate in their interpretations, this process is a lot like trying to read other peoples’ minds and it provides grossly inaccurate results.

If you want to overcome shyness, you’ve got to realize that you can’t read other peoples’ minds and that whatever interpretations you’re making of each small gesture are probably wrong. As you do so, you can move on to consciously reducing your mind-reading and thus overcoming your shyness.

Learn To Let Go Of Perfectionism

The final part of the answer to the question “How to overcome shyness?” has to do with changing your self-imposed standards.

Make sure to check out my free conversation confidence guide for more details on solving this issues, as well as as how to transform into an authentic and confident person in social settings. Get it here.

Shy people tend to be insanely perfectionist. They ask of themselves to come across as ideal and they have a low tolerance for people not liking them or not approving of them. If you want to enjoy social interactions more, abandoning such absurd standards is a must.

Now, notice that I didn’t say “let go of perfectionism”, I said “learn to let go”. This is because it’s a process. It will call for identifying your perfectionist social expectations as they manifest in your habitual thinking, then addressing them by changing your thinking in a conscious manner.

By the way, I have a free social confidence guide for you that will teach you how to do this and overcome shyness.

A Systemic Approach

Overall, overcoming shyness effectively takes not only the right pieces of advice and techniques, but also applying them in a systemic style. This implies:

Setting gradual personal development goals for yourself;
Working on them daily and rewarding yourself;
Persisting and getting back on track if you quit;
Mixing the internal cognitive change with the external behavioral change.

As you do so, you will see gradual progress and the occasional leaps forward. You will rewrite your map of the world and your social habits. As a result, you will experience more social freedom and a richer social life. That’s how to overcome shyness the successful way.

Image courtesy of fanfan2145

Filed Under: Attitude, People Skills, Psychology Tagged With: how, overcome, shyness 40 Comments