The best way to make an impression on someone is to ask questions about them until you find some
Our egos drive our behavior. The best way to boil Carnegie down is to always ask "Is the person's sense of importance going to be flattered or offended by this? How can I phrase it in a way that will at least not offend their importance, if I can't flatter it?"
This was a really good handle for me because I do believe that everyone is [potentially] important, and it makes sense to me that we should respect that fact in all interactions. It makes sense that people would avoid those who damage their own sense of self-importance, which they have every right to have.
This realization took away a lot of the reticence I felt around hand-crafted social experiences. It doesn't really require you to be untruthful in any way, or prevent you from getting your point across; it just gives a good guideline for how to do so sensitively.
Don't know if it will click for anyone else, but that's what did it for me.
I've heard that men that tease each other (in one sense making them feel less important) in groups do it as a bonding experience, because the fact that you can tease the other person without them punching you is a sign that you're members of the same group. On the other hand, gently teasing someone in a group can make them feel more important as well, since you're suggesting that they're important enough to deserve being teased.
With Carnegie on one side and the pick-up artists on the other, I'll obviously side with Carnegie's more positive view of human interactions. It also fits well with a tenet in improvisational theater that you should always make the other actor look good. You both benefit from that, especially if they do the same to you. If you make them look good, the audience thinks you're both good, and the other actor will want to play more scenes with you. It seems like an obvious suggestion, but what it does is it shifts your focus from what you can do to look good yourself to what you can do to make the other person look good, which is often a lot easier anyway. It takes you out of your own head and makes you more attentive and focused on the other person, so that you can respond to and amplify the good thing they do.
You should. It's a short book (a few hours to read), and then you can tell everyone you've read it, since it's one of the first things that gets asked when leadership skills are in play (most people don't seem to fixate on the importance aspect like I did, though).
IMO researching psychology will pay more direct dividends than researching any other field. A lot of the stuff you run across is intuitively true and you can immediately recognize it throughout your life. Doing the research gives you a vocabulary to describe it and heightens your awareness significantly, enabling you to better utilize the social skills that we all have hiding under the covers somewhere. :)
It is important to carefully select your material, though, because there is a lot of nonsense pop psychology out there. I would avoid the more general, mass-appeal stuff and stick to the classics starting out.
>It's interesting that on one side you have Carnegie's "make them feel important to make them interested in you" and on the other side you have the pick-up artists' (I'm not defending them) "neg them to make them interested in you". In one variant you lift the other person up and in the other you push them down, both with the idea of wanting them to talk to you more.
Well, there is some nuance here.
Pick up artists suggest starving the mark of attention because that sends a signal that you are important, which sets them up to believe that they're important too when you do finally impart attention.
On the other hand, giving too much attention to a person sends the signal that you're too available, that you don't have anything else going on. That creates the impression that if no one else is interested in your time, it may not be valuable.
Since important people don't hang out with unimportant people, this causes the potential partner to worry about their association with you, and how it may affect their importance, both in the absolute/real sense and in the perception of others.
I haven't gone deep into the pick up artist scene, so I'm not really familiar with the intricacies of "negging". I'm sure that a lot of parts of it are way overboard. But they are correct that in seduction, few things are quite so fatal as the whiff of desperation. It devalues everyone involved.
>what it does is it shifts your focus from what you can do to look good yourself to what you can do to make the other person look good, which is often a lot easier anyway. It takes you out of your own head and makes you more attentive and focused on the other person, so that you can respond to and amplify the good thing they do.
Also yes, I think this is one of the keys too. The better you can approximate and relate to the POV of the other individual, the better you're going to do. Structures and activities that close this gap are crucially important to happy relationships.
Having in mind I screwed up so much in my life also taught me humility; I judge people less and less with each passing day.
Those two things help a lot when talking to people in both casual and professional settings.
Yes, but you have to be careful or you can make the person feel like they are being interrogated. Maybe not quite to the level of shining a bright light in their face and asking "where were you at 8:00pm on the night of January 23rd", but still, an endless stream of questions - done poorly - can make people feel uncomfortable even if it is true that "people love talking about themselves".
You may laugh at this, but some of the best advice I've heard on this subject came from Kezia Noble, a lady who teaches "pickup artist" material. Except... she bills herself as part of that world, but in reality her material is just general conversation skills which can be applied in pretty much any context.
I don't feel like trying to type up a complete rehash / summary of her technique here, but a big part of it involves distinguishing between "high value" answers to questions, and "low value" answers, and figuring out how to branch off from the high value answers in a way that keeps the other person engaged. There's also an element about making statements instead of just asking questions, etc.
Just to illustrate, here's a really made up example of how this might go:
You: "So, where did you go to school?"
Them: "Berkeley" (reasonably high value answer, but what to do with it??)
You: "Oh. So... what did you major in?"
Them: "Economics." (again, good answer, but can you do something with it?)
You: "Oh. Ah. Cool. So you must like math, huh?"
Them: "no". ("yes", "no", etc. are usually low value answers that don't lead naturally to anything else)
You: "Oh. Right. SO, um... do you like fishing?"
Them: "What? No. What is this, an interview?"
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On the other hand, here's how it could go:
You: "So, where did you go to school?"
Them: "Berkeley"
You: "Nice. Why did you pick Berkeley?"
Them: "Well, it has a reputation for great academics and a tradition of activism."
You: "Oh, yeah. My school ($WHATEVER) had a great academics as well, but not much activism." (statement instead of a question)
Them: "Activism is really important to me, especially around climate change. I wouldn't have gone to a school that didn't have that aspect."
You: "Cool. So what did you major in?"
Them: "Economics."
You: "Ah... so what's the connection between economics and climate change?"
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Anyway, you can kind of see the pattern. Elicit more complex responses, make statements, lead off of their complex answers, don't just suddenly branch off to something unrelated, etc.
Off topic, but this is so cringe-worthy...
I'm actually genuinely curious why you feel that way, assuming the person is sincere.
It's also completely unrelated to the quality of education you will get so it's stupid to tie your school selection to that. It's like choosing a campus based on one with the most red-colored buildings.
1. I parsed the statement slightly differently, in that having a campus full of activism was important, not specifically climate change.
2. Activism requires learning and networking, so it makes sense that if you want to learn that skill and form a network fresh out of high school, you would go somewhere there's an established network to join and many mentors to be found. It's much more like choosing a school because their alumni organization has connections you're interested in or has business ties to an industry you want to get in to or has a famous athletics program or any of the not-strictly-academic reasons that make sense from a career development perspective.
If the person seriously wants to be an activist, even in a non-professional capacity, it makes sense to go somewhere they develop that part of you (even if they don't have the best academics).
It's nothing like choosing one based on red building count.
Knowledge of NLP helps. Not practicing it consciously but understanding the theory behind it.
Is important to make a connection and pay attention to others. Too many people make it a one way conversation and walk away wondering why things didn't go better, meanwhile they were talking 80% of the time.
Any time you can make others feel included, and their opinion matters during a meeting the better things will go.
It can be very dangerous and malicious to use that basic knowledge of how to conduct a conversation to do what? .. "make people feel special and you care when you absolutely don't give a damn about them", and the conversation is purely a means to an end.
That said, it's nice to be nice, and much better to be inclusive, even if you needed to learn that from a pretty fringe bunch of theory.
[Edit] As a side note, I was first introduced to NLP when someone used it on me in person as a means to try to get me to work for an organized online credit card phishing operation and wanted me to move to Costa Rica.
It was a very strange experience and was effective up until the point I noticed what they were doing
Took me a few days figure out what had happened. I didn't know anything about NLP at the time and was kind of shocked that this was an actual thing.
Ended up calling the FBI.
Not the first time I've been approached by the Russians and to be clear I have nothing against them either, but if and when they do it again, please don't steal my paper towels or abuse my washing machine.
Right so reading that you probably think it is so fantastical that it can't possibly be true, or that it is so bizarre what I wrote that it makes no sense and I'm nuts. But there are people out there who know what happened and the truth is even more strange than I can share here.
Well I would agree with you on the weirdness, it was fantastical and it was bizarre, but it isn't the first time I've been approached by them or probably the last. The first time was in the early 90's just after releasing my DES hack thing. It just got weirder from there.
Honestly quite like the attempts in some ways, it's flattering, and she really was talented as were her friends. Cute too.
So to them, please go ahead and try again but next time, leave the Costa Rica thing out, or at least make it somewhere a little more temperate.
I really have no problem working for the intelligence agencies as long as it is for a good reason.
Just be honest.
For example:
You: "So, where did you go to school?"
Them: "Berkeley"
You: "Nice. Why did you pick Berkeley?"
Them: "It has a good academic reputation."
You: "A good academic reputation for what?"
Them: "CS research, rioting, etc. What is this, an interview?"
I currently read the pen-and-paper RPG Microscope, and one rule in the game is that before a scene you select a question to direct the action. The scene concludes when the question has been answered. There's no game master so all players collaborate to create characters and answer the scene question.
The game text says "The best questions are extremely specific. Vague questions are bad and lead to confusing or muddled scenes. Open-ended questions can work, but you will get much better scenes out of very loaded or incriminating questions."
The game goes on to list examples:
"If you have an idea you want to explore, don't hesitate to stack the deck and make your question more specific. A simple formula is to just add more conditions or 'even though' twists to establish clear issues.
'How does the Alliance beat the invaders?' is a good starting point, but that's a very open-ended scene.
'How does the Alliance beat the invaders even though they're outnumbered and outgunned?' is more specific. We have a better idea of the situation.
'Is the Alliance willing to sacrifice the colony on Sigma VII to beat the invaders even though the colonists will get slaughtered in the process?' is better still because it gives us a clear situation, an obvious dilemma."
Finally, on good questions:
"It may not immediately be clear why a question is interesting. Don't be alarmed. Once you ask the question, the other players get to jump in and run with it. They may have ideas you didn't even consider. So long as your question gets everyone on the same page about the scene, you're in good shape."
This relates to what hueving said. The game assumes that the other players want to turn your questions into something interesting, and that you collaborate to create something great. If the other players are hostile or indifferent, they can ignore your question and take the scene in a completely different direction so that it never ends, but the point is that some questions have a better chance of keeping things on track. The same with other people. If you're talking to someone indifferent to hostile, they can obviously shoot down all conversation, but if they're indifferent to positive, you may have a chance to interest them.
I looked up Kezia Noble on YouTube, having never heard of her. I think your summary of what she says was more interesting than her videos, at least the first one I watched on how to specifically talk to women in the fashion industry. But in another video she said something interesting on posing questions that take the other person off auto pilot. If you ask "So what do you do?" and they answer "I'm a teacher." and you say "Do you like it?" they'll probably say "Oh, it's OK." or something similar. They (and you) are on auto pilot, and have probably both had this exact exchange before with other people. If you instead ask "So what made you choose teaching?" you'll perhaps take them off script and force them to think, which is a good thing because it makes them more engaged in the conversation. I think it relates to the RPG suggestions above to be a bit more specific with the questions, and to try to add some kind of twist to the question to make the other person think.
Oh yeah, I should have considered that if somebody went looking for her on Youtube they might find something different than the material I watched. Some of her stuff is straight-up "how to meet women" stuff, but quite a bit of it isn't. In particular, I'm thinking of her program called, IIRC, "The Ten Hook Lead System".
But in another video she said something interesting on posing questions that take the other person off auto pilot. If you ask "So what do you do?" and they answer "I'm a teacher." and you say "Do you like it?" they'll probably say "Oh, it's OK." or something similar. They (and you) are on auto pilot, and have probably both had this exact exchange before with other people. If you instead ask "So what made you choose teaching?" you'll perhaps take them off script and force them to think, which is a good thing because it makes them more engaged in the conversation.
Yep, that's more in line with the stuff I remember from her. And that applies to plenty of other contexts besides trying to "pick up" date or whatever.
Absolutely no need to optimize here. Just do what Dale Carnegie told on the book: "Become genuinely interested in the other person".
Interview questions like that will always sound like an interview.
HAH! There was no 8:00pm on that night! Time skipped from 7:59pm to 9:00pm! Nice try.