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

by Leil Lowndes

Never, ever, make a joke at anyone else's expense. You'll wind up paying for it, dearly.

It's not the news that makes someone angry. It's the unsympathetic attitude with which it's delivered. Everyone must give bad news from time to time, and winning professionals do it with the proper attitude.

Big winners know, when delivering any bad news, they should share the sentiment of the receiver.

Before throwing out any news, keep your receiver in mind. Then deliver it with a smile, a sigh, or a sob. Not according to how you feel about the news, but how the receiver will take it.

"The Broken Record" technique, the most effective way to curtail an unwelcome cross-examination.

Whenever someone persists in questioning you on an unwelcome subject, simply repeat your original response. Use precisely the same words in precisely the same tone of voice. Hearing it again usually quiets them down. If your rude interrogator hangs on like a leech, your next repetition never fails to flick them off.

Think of yourself as a ballroom dance student waltzing with your teacher. He leads, you follow. And he tells you when the waltz is over.

Whenever the occasion warrants more than an unconscious acknowledgment, dress up your "thank you" with the reason: Thank you for coming. Thank you for being so understanding. Thank you for waiting. Thank you for being such a good customer. Thank you for being so loving.

Never let the phrase "thank you" stand alone. From A to Z, always follow it with for: from "Thank you for asking" to "Thank you for zipping me up."

Scramble Therapy is, quite simply, scrambling up your life and participating in an activity you'd never think of indulging in. Just one out of every four weekends, do something totally out of your pattern.

A sampling gives you 80 percent of the conversational value. You learn the insider's questions to ask. You start using the right terms. You'll never be at a loss again when the subject of extracurricular interests comes up—which it always does.

TECHNIQUE #38 SCRAMBLE THERAPY Once a month, scramble your life. Do something you'd never dream of doing. Participate in a sport, go to an exhibition, hear a lecture on something totally out of your experience. You get 80 percent of the right lingo and insider questions from just one exposure.

BARING THEIR HOT BUTTON Before jumping blindly into a bevy of bookbinders or a drove of dentists, find out what the hot issues are in their fields. Every industry has burning concerns the outside world knows little about. Ask your informant to bare the industry buzz. Then, to heat the conversation up, push those buttons.

Buddhists—or anything in between? There are untold thousands of monthly magazines serving every imaginable interest. You can dish up more information than you'll ever need to sound like an insider with anyone just by reading the rags that serve their racket.

Before every big purchase, find several vendors—a few to learn from and one to buy from. Armed with a few words of industryese, you're ready to head for the store where you're going to buy.

Suppose you are selling a car to a young mother who tells you she is concerned about safety because she has a young "toddler." When explaining the safety features of the car, use her word. Don't use whatever word you call your kids. Don't even say child-protection lock, which was in your sales manual. Tell your prospect, "No toddler can open the window because of the driver's control device." Even call it a toddler-protection lock. When Mom hears toddler coming from your lips, she feels you are "family" because that's how all her relatives refer to her little tyke.

Let's say you are at a party. It's a huge bash with many different types of people. You are first chatting with a lawyer who tells you her profession is often maligned. When it comes your turn to speak, say profession too. If you say job, it puts a subconscious barrier between you.

Next you meet a construction worker who starts talking about his job. Now you're in trouble if you say, "Well, in my profession. . ." he'd think you were being hoity-toity.

I have a dear friend, Leslie, who is in a wheelchair. She says whenever anyone says the word handicapped, she cringes. Leslie says it makes her feel less than whole. "We prefer you say person with a disability."

Empathizers are simple, short, supportive statements. Unlike "uh huh," they are complete sentences such as "I can appreciate you decided to do that," or "That really is exciting." Empathizers can be one-sentence positive critiques like "Yes, that was the honorable thing to do," or "It's charming you felt that way." When you respond with complete sentences instead of the usual grunts, not only do you come across as more articulate, but your listener feels that you really understand.

Don't be an unconscious ummer. Vocalize complete sentences to show your understanding. Dust your dialogue with phrases like "I see what you mean." Sprinkle it with sentimental sparklers like "That's a lovely thing to say." Your empathy impresses your listeners and encourages them to continue.

Anatomically Correct Empathizers," and it's easy to master. Unless it is obvious the person you are speaking with is primarily visual, auditory, or kinesthetic, simply respond in his or her mode of the moment. Match your empathizers to the current sense someone is talking through. For example, suppose a business colleague describing a financial plan says, "With this plan, we can see our way clear in six months." Since this time she's using primarily visual references, say "I see what you mean" or "You really have a clear picture of that situation."

A technique to achieve the ultimate verbal intimacy grows out of this phenomenon. Simply use the word we prematurely. You can use it to make a client, a prospect, a stranger feel you are already friends. Use it to make a potential romantic partner feel the two of you are already an item. I call it the "Premature We." In casual conversation, simply cut through levels one and two. Jump straight to three and four.

The word we fosters togetherness. It makes the listener feel connected. It gives a subliminal feeling of "you and me against the cold, cold world." When you prematurely say we or us, even to strangers, it subconsciously brings them closer. It subliminally hints you are already friends.

THE PREMATURE WE Create the sensation of intimacy with someone even if you've met just moments before. Scramble the signals in their psyche by skipping conversational levels one and two and cutting right to levels three and four. Elicit intimate feelings by using the magic words we, us, and our.

If he or she has a speck of suspicion your praise is self-serving, it has the opposite effect. If your compliment is insincere or unskilled, it can wreck your chances of ever being trusted by that person again.

What is the difference between praise that lifts and flattery that flattens? Many factors enter the equation. They include your sincerity, timing, motivation, and wording. They also involve the recipient's self-image, professional position, experience with compliments, and judgment of your powers of perception.

you are taken more seriously if you preface your comments by some self-effacing remark—but only if your listener perceives you as higher on the totem pole. If you're lower, your self-effacing remark reduces your credibility.

"He's my friend that speaks well of me behind my back." We're more apt to trust someone who says nice things about us when we aren't listening than someone who flatters us to our face.

Instead of telling someone directly of your admiration, tell someone who is close to the person you wish to compliment.

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.

Here's where it benefits you. Everyone loves the bearer of glad tidings. When you bring someone third-party kudos, they appreciate you as much as the complimenter. Call it gossip if you like. This is the good kind.

Whenever you hear something complimentary about someone, fly to them with the compliment.

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.

What is the Killer Compliment? It is commenting on some very personal and specific quality you spot in someone. A Killer Compliment is not "I like your tie" or "You're a very nice person." (The first is not personal enough and the second is not specific enough.) A Killer Compliment is more like "What exquisite eyes you have," (very specific) or "You have a wonderful air of honesty about you," (very personal).

At the end of the conversation, look the individual right in the eye. Say his or her name and proceed to curl all ten toes with the Killer Compliment.

Rule #1: Deliver your Killer Compliment to the recipient in private. If you are standing with a group of four or five people and you praise one woman for being fit, every other woman feels like a barrel of lard.

Make your Killer Compliment credible. For example, I'm tone-deaf. If I'm forced to sing even a simple song like "Happy Birthday," I sound like a sick pig. If anyone in earshot were foolish enough to tell me they liked my voice, I'd know it was hogwash.

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!"

When the doctor sadistically smacks your knee with that nasty little rubber hammer, you instantly give a knee jerk. And when people make a coup, you must instantly hit them with a knee-jerk "Wow, you were great!"

Quick as a blink, you must praise people the moment they 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.

But What If They Really Bombed? "Are you asking me to lie?" you ask. Yes. Absolutely, positively, resoundingly, YES. This is one of the few moments in life where a lie is condoned by the most ethical individuals. Big winners realize that sensitivity to an insecure performer's ego takes momentary precedence over their deep commitment to the truth. They also know, when sanity returns to the recipient and they suspect they screwed up, it won't matter.

Upon receiving a compliment, many people demur or proffer an embarrassed little "Thank you." Worse, they protest, "Well, not really, but thanks anyway." Some people toss it off with, "just luck." When you react this way, you visit a grave injustice on the complimenter. You insult a well-meaning person's powers of perception.

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."

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.

Whenever you are talking, you must consider your medium. If your face were on a big movie screen, you might get your message across with a wink or an eyebrow raise. On radio, however, that would be meaningless. Because listeners couldn't see your wink, you'd have to say something like "Hi, Cutie." Because listeners couldn't see your raised eyebrows, you'd have to say, "Wow, I'm surprised!"

Your body language and facial expressions comprise more than half your personality. When people don't see you, they can get an entirely wrong impression

get your personality across on the phone, you must translate your emotions into sound. In fact, you have to exaggerate the sound because studies have shown people lose 30 percent ...

use your caller's name far more often than you would in person. In fact, shower your conversations with his or her name. When your listener hears it, it's like receiving a verbal caress:

When you say someone's name on the phone, it's like yanking the person into the room with you.