An ex-FBI agent's guide to winning people over

yeah, basically it's these two rules:

1) Be nice

2) Don't be an asshole

Turns out the fastest way to make someone like you is to actually pay attention to them. Most people are so focused on what they’re going to say next that they don’t listen fully, and people really like feeling like they’ve been heard.

And yet it seems so rare. I can get people talking about themselves for an endless amount of time. Rarely do I come across anyone who actually seems to do the same for others.

I concur.

Also I'm fascinated how in those days, in the US, anything was a business. Any microscopic hurdle can be turned into profit by selling your experience and whatever little trick you found to gain whatever little edge.

We're people, stop trying to have skills to win a spot in society.

This is all fear induced, because we all feel like we need a spot in the social tissue. But playing that game makes you often very shallow.

There's a lot to say about social dynamics and these are only the beginning and in the end it doesn't provide real value: long term quality bonds.

You assume all people are well socialised and already understand non-verbal communication. Some people do not recognise different faces, let alone facial expressions. This sort of checklists are very helpfull.

So, giving out good advice is bad because people might follow it robotically or get it wrong in some other way?

I'm not sure what my conclusion should be. I don't see a problem with this list.

It seems like charming psychopaths are using most of these checklists to further their goals and fly under the radar. One must admit that these checklists are just common sense and not bad in themselves, what is bad is the goal of winning people over for attaining some nefarious goal or gain some advantage.

My favorite theme of the referenced book is that the best way to get people to like you is to act like you care about them, and the best way to act like you care about them is to actually care about them. Tactics are worth knowing, but nothing replaces authenticity.

> Every time I see one of these 'how to make friends and influence people' sort of lists, I can't help but fear for the young people who will take them as gospel and act like a robot, moving through them as a checklist.

Not a "young person" anymore, but with all of the recent isolation, I think this will be helpful for me and presumably others who are reemerging into society and hoping to find people to spend time with.

Thanks for the tip though...must remember it's not a checklist!

>Every time I see one of these 'how to make friends and influence people' sort of lists, I can't help but fear for the young people who will take them as gospel and act like a robot, moving through them as a checklist.

Guides that distill complex things into detail free free checklists and absolute rules that have lost so much nuance they are useless are wildly popular.

> In other words, act like a person who is trying to make friends with another person.

Nah, I'm good.

> In other words, act like a person who is trying to make friends with another person.

Yeah, but "act like a person who is trying to make friends with another person" is unusable when you don't know how to make friends. It's like with holy texts saying "Love thy neighbour", but Kamasutra is more specific.

"I can't help but fear for the young people who will take them as gospel and act like a robot, moving through them as a checklist."

Why?

Kind of funny that a FBI agent is being floated as a charm expert. Aren’t FBI agents notoriously stiff and awkward?

>> try being sincere. Most people seem to like that

That hasn't been my experience. I would get fired from my job if I did that.

Is the FBI missing a lot of bomb plots?

FBI Agent: “Who wants to be a firetruck?”

Mentally Impaired Guy: “Oh! Me! Me! Me!”

FBI Agent: (into secret wristwatch radio) “Get HQ on the line, I’ve got another major terror plot candidate on the hook!”

You probably spot the ones who are deliberately applying it every time. The ones who do it fluidly you think of as nice people.

The problem is, even the people who do this stuff deliberately still get you to talk about yourself, so you can't help but like them a little.

Therapists/Counselors are maybe the only people who can do this deliberately and not have it seem like they're moving through a checklist like a lizard wearing a people suit.

> I claim, perhaps provocatively, that prioritizing being liked and "winning" is makes it very difficult to behave ethically.

If your only goal is winning and being liked, then I would agree with your statement. But thats taking a skill into isolation, and completely ignoring the wider applications of that skill.

I would hope that people employ the skill of being liked and “winning” to help further ethical goals, and help persuade people that unpopular ethical acts are actually important and valuable, thus increasing wider support for such acts.

Ignoring those wider opportunities would be like saying that programming is a waste of time, because you’re only teaching a computer to do stuff, you’re not solving problems for actual people. This argument, of course, ignores the fact that you can use programming to teach computers to solve problems for real people. And indeed thats the primary reason most people program.

You got the real guide right here