Instead of being an average conversationalist, you can be excellent and hold others attention without any effort on your part.
What separates a person from being a good conversationalist instead of just an average one? Some people have problems with holding a conversation and commanding attention, and I’m here to tell you it doesn’t have to be that way. You can be successful, effective, and natural without becoming stressed and worrying about how to keep a conversation going.
The question here is not how to be a good conversationalist, but how to be excellent at it and hold someone’s attention. The real key to being successful is that you must be aware that conversation is a two-way process. What I mean by this is that it’s a mistake to think that it’s one way interacting, because it takes two to have a conversation.
A conversation requires more than having nothing to talk about.
The art of communication is to remember that it is a two-way street. It takes two to tango.
Effective communication skills requires more than practicing routines and particular lines in a particular way. No two conversations are alike, so practicing routine answers aren’t going to cut it. When you are conversing with someone, it’s just not you doing the talking. You can’t initiate a conversation in the hopes that they come back with a particular response. Because when they don’t, the prepared response you have won’t work, and then you will be thrown out of sync.
Unfortunately, when we are talking with people, we sometimes forget that there is a human factor involved. Routine game would be a brilliant form of game if we are trying to pick up robots. The human interaction means that there is going to be a complex variety of ways that a person can respond to you. If your focus is too heavily placed on what you are going to say next and not heavily placed on what they are saying, two things are going to happen.
The first one is, they are going to feel disconnected to you. They will sense that you are now distracted, and not paying attention. You’re not paying attention because your focus is off, and you aren’t prepared on what to say next. You have lost the connection of the conversation, and your body language will reflect this.
The second thing is you are going to miss out on real valuable cues. Often when guys work on conversational philosophies they also must learn to pick up on conversation cues as well. You must get to a point where you are able to talk for hours and hours and never run out of things to say. This is because you are able to read the cues that people are sending. One of the products we offer that will give you more in-depth advice is Vin DiCarlo’s Conversation Cure.
The most effective communication skill is finding common ground.
What I have found in holding a conversation without it becoming a traumatic event is to find a common area; a commonality that you can work off of. Once you find something that you have in common, the conversation takes off without any effort on either party involved. You begin to flow off of things that have been said and then use those things to further escalate the conversation.
To me I think the big difference with guys that are successful with conversation and guys that are not is their ability to specifically listen to whats being said and to take that information and to use it to help escalate the conversation. Find a common interest, because once you do, the conversation will flow with ease. Look for cues in what’s being said.
Maybe the person you’re conversing with has a favorite sport, a favorite food, or comes from a particular area that you are familiar with. Work on finding a commonality, and work it into the conversation. Find a topic of interest, and the conversation will flow.
You have got to remember not to expect a conversation to be routine, because communication never is. Forget about having a set response, because you will lose focus once you don’t get the response you are expecting, and the conversation will fail before it starts. Also, find something in common that you both have, and talk about that.
If you can find a topic that is familiar, then you will be comfortable, and so will the person you are talking to. Once you learn and implement these two things, then you will be able to hold a conversation, and do it effectively without effort.
