How to Talk to Anyone: 92 Little Tricks for Big Success in Relationships

by Leil Lowndes

Technique 50: Instant history When you meet a stranger you’d like to make less a stranger, search for some special moment you shared during your first encounter. Then find a few words that reprieve the laugh, the warm smile, the good feelings the two of you felt. Now, just like old friends, you have a history together, an Instant History.

Technique 51: Grapevine glory A compliment one hears is never as exciting as the one he overhears. A priceless way to praise is not by telephone, not by telegraph, but by tell-a-friend. This way you escape possible suspicion that you are an apple-polishing, bootlicking, egg-sucking, back-scratching sycophant trying to win brownie points. You also leave recipients with the happy fantasy that you are telling the whole world about their greatness.

Technique 52: Carrier pigeon kudos People immediately grow a beak and metamorphosize themselves into carrier pigeons when there’s bad news. (It’s called gossip.) Instead, become a carrier of good news and kudos. Whenever you hear something complimentary about someone, fly to them with the compliment. Your fans may not posthumously stuff you and put you on display in a museum like Stumpy Joe. But everyone loves the Carrier Pigeon of kind thoughts.

Carry more cargo than compliments Another way to warm hearts and win friends is to become a carrier pigeon of news items that might interest the recipient. Call, mail, or e-mail people with information they might find interesting. If your friend Ned is a furniture designer in North Carolina and you see a big article in the Los Angeles Times about furniture trends, fax it to him. If your client Sally is a sculptor in Seattle and you see her work in someone’s home in New York, sent her a note.

Technique 53: Implied magnificence Throw a few comments into your conversation that presuppose something positive about the person you’re talking with. But be careful. Don’t blow it like the well-intentioned maintenance man. Or the southern boy who, at the prom, thought he was flattering his date when he told her, ‘Gosh, MaryLou, for a fat gal you dance real good.’

Technique 54: Accidental adulation Become an undercover complimenter. Stealthily sneak praise into the parenthetical part of your sentence. Just don’t try to quiz anyone later on your main point. The joyful jolt of your accidental adulation strikes them temporarily deaf to anything that follows.

Technique 55: The killer compliment Whenever you are talking with a stranger you’d like to make part of your professional or personal future, search for one attractive, specific, and unique quality he or she has. At the end of the conversation, look them right in the eye. Say their name and proceed to curl their toes with the Killer Compliment.

Technique 56: Little strokes Don’t make your colleagues, your friends, your loved ones look at you and silently say, ‘Haven’t I been pretty good today?’ Let them know how much you appreciate them by caressing them with verbal Little Strokes like ‘Nice job!’ ‘Well done!’ ‘Cool!’

Technique 57: The knee-jerk ‘wow!’ Quick as a blink, you must praise people the moment they a finish a feat. In a wink, like a knee-jerk reaction say, ‘You were terrific!’ Don’t worry that they won’t believe you. The euphoria of the moment has a strangely numbing effect on the achiever’s objective judgment.

He says, ‘You really did a good job on this project.’ You say, ‘Oh, that’s so nice of you to tell me. I appreciate your positive feedback.’

Whenever someone shines a little sunshine on your life in the form of a compliment or concerned question, reflect it back on the shiner. Technique 58: Boomeranging Just as a boomerang flies right back to the thrower, let compliments boomerang right back to the giver. Like the French, quickly murmur something that expresses ‘That’s very kind of you.’

love you because … (you fill in the blank)’ Suppose your significant other is Jane Wilson in the preceding example. Tell your beloved, ‘Jane, I love you because you spread joy wherever you go.’ Suppose your life partner is Harry Jones. You take his hand and say, ‘Harry, I love you because you live life your way.’ BLAM! You have found that tender spot where the heart and the ego blend.

Technique 59: The tombstone game Ask the important people in your life what they would like engraved on their tombstone. Chisel it into your memory but don’t mention it again. Then, when the moment is right to say ‘I appreciate you’ or ‘I love you,’ fill the blanks with the very words they gave you weeks earlier. You take people’s breath away when you feed their deepest self-image to them in a compliment. ‘At last,’ they say to themselves, ‘someone who loves me for who I truly am.’

Talking gestures Think of yourself as the star of a personal radio drama every time you pick up the phone. If you want to come across as engaging as you are, you must turn your smiles into sound, your nods into noise, and all your gestures into something your listener can hear. You must replace your gestures with talk. Then punch up the whole act 30 per cent!

Technique 61: Name shower People perk up when they hear their own name. Use it more often on the phone than you would in person to keep their attention. Your caller’s name re-creates the eye contact, the caress, you might give in person.

Technique 62: Oh wow, it’s you! Don’t answer the phone with an ‘I’m just sooo happy all the time’ attitude. Answer warmly, crisply, professionally. Then, after you hear who is calling, let a huge smile of happiness engulf your entire face and spill over into your voice. You make your caller feel as though your giant warm fuzzy smile is reserved for him or her.

Before launching into conversation, they always ask ‘Is this a good time to chat?’ ‘Did I catch you at a good time?’ ‘Do you have a minute to discuss the widget account?’

When you invoke the last major or minor event in anyone’s life, it confirms what they’ve known all along. They’re the most important person in the world.

Technique 75: Tracking Like an air-traffic controller, track the tiniest details of your Conversation Partners’ lives. Refer to them in your conversation like a major news story. It creates a powerful sense of intimacy. When you envoke the last major or minor event in anyone’s life, it confirms the deep conviction that he or she is an old-style hero around whom the world revolves. And people love you for recognizing their stardom.

Technique 78: See no bloopers, hear no bloopers Cool Communicators allow their friends, associates, acquaintances, and loved ones the pleasurable myth of being above commonplace bloopers and embarrassing biological functions. They simply don’t notice their comrades’ minor spills, slips, fumbles, and faux pas. They obviously ignore raspberries and all other signs of human frailty in their fellow mortals. Big Winners never gape at another’s gaffes. If people hate to be reminded

Technique 79: Lend a helping tongue Whenever someone’s story is aborted, let the interruption play itself out. Give everyone time to dote on the little darling, give their dinner order, or pick up the jagged pieces of china. Then, when the group reassembles, simply say to the person who suffered story-interruptus, ‘Now please get back to your story.’ Or better yet, remember where they were and then ask, ‘So what happened after the … (and fill in the last few words.)’

Bare the buried WIIFM (and WIIFY) Whenever you suggest a meeting or ask a favour, divulge the respective benefits. Reveal what’s in it for you and what’s in it for the other person – even if it’s zip. If any hidden agenda comes up later, you get labelled a sly fox.

obey: don’t jump immediately when someone is doing you a favour. Allow the person granting the favour time to savour the pleasure of agreeing to it, before having to pay up.

When people do you favours and it’s obvious ‘they owe you one,’ wait a suitable amount of time before asking them to ‘pay.’ Let them enjoy the fact (or fiction) that you did it out of friendship. Don’t call in your tit for their tat too swiftly. The next three

There are three sacred safe havens in the human jungle where even the toughest tiger knows he must not attack. The first of these is parties. Parties are for pleasantries and good fellowship, not for confrontations. Big Players, even when standing next to their enemies at the buffet table, smile and nod. They leave tough talk for tougher settings.

The most guarded safe haven respected by Big Winners is the dining table. Breaking bread together is a time when they bring up no unpleasant matters. While eating, they know it’s OK to brainstorm and discuss the positive side of the business: their dreams, their desires, their designs. They can free associate and come up with new ideas. But no tough business.

Chance encounters are for chitchat If you’re selling, negotiating, or in any sensitive communication with someone, do NOT capitalize on a chance meeting. Keep the melody of your mistaken meeting sweet and light. Otherwise, it could turn into your swan song with Big Player.

Technique 87: Echo the EMO Facts speak. Emotions shout. Whenever you need facts from people about an emotional situation, let them emote. Hear their facts but empathize like mad with their emotions. Smearing on the EMO is often the only way to calm their emotional storm.

Buttercups for their boss Do you have a store clerk, accountant, law firm junior partner, tailor, auto mechanic, maitre d’, massage therapist, kid’s teacher – or any other worker you want special attention from in the future? The surefire way to make them care enough to give you their very best is send a Buttercup to their boss.