Importantly people much smarter, older, and more experienced than you.
1. Listen
- By far the most important. More important than the whole list combined.
- Each conversation should be 80% listening, 20% talking. Ideally less.
- Always listen like the person you are talking to knows more than you, and always over estimate their accomplishment and success. Doing the opposite can kill.
- When you actually listen hard, you'll find it really easy to ask really good questions.
- You're not ask questions to sound smart, you're asking questions to learn about or understand something they've said deeper.
- Bad conversation usually brews from not actually listening.
2. Have more conversations
- Obvious, but you would have already mastered all these conversational skills if you'd already had 1000 conversations.
- Most people would over estimate the amount of new conversations they have, and don't understand the scale at which you could be having these new conversations.
- You should aim for at least 1 conversation with someone new everyday. 365 conversations per year.
- Talking to anyone new is helpful. Talking to someone smarter/more experienced/older is even more helpful. Try find these people.
- You can find people via:
- Family/parents friends
- Social media (LinkedIn)
- Email (You can find mostly anyones email)
- Communities / universities / education programs
- Talking to strangers in public
- People at your gym
- Asking new people you meet about people they know
3. Be knowledgable
- You can't really expect to have smart conversations if you aren't at least a little bit educated. You nearly never need to be as educated as your counterpart, but having a general knowledge base will help.
- If you want to prepare beforehand, prepare on subject matter, not individual lines you think would be cool or smart to say.
- The words you say should be constructed during the flow of the conversation, not forced, and built using:
- Your knowledge base
- Good questions (you think of these if you're actually listening hard)
- Improving your articulation is done prior, not during conversation.
- Thing you can do to improve articulation:
- Read books
- Watch informative YouTube videos
- Creatively express more of your thoughts. Write things down, record videos or voice memos. Creative expression leads to clarity
- Filter out inarticulate inputs (too much social media, poor choice of environments, brainrot)
- General knowledge is an underrated skill, and not very hard to accumulate. Go very deep on some subjects, and find surface level links with as many others.
- Bonus tip: Without being weird, try to be very knowledgeable about their personal network and career experience. If you can find commonalities between them and yourself, discuss them. It's an easy way to create a positive connection.
4. Be yourself
- Don't try to sound smart. It always backfires.
- Great conversations come from genuine comfort.
- Things that brew comfort:
- Being yourself
- Being prepared
- Being physically comfortable
- Being curious
- Talking from your values and beliefs
- Listening
- Things that erase comfort:
- Overthinking
- Trying to sound smarter than you are
- Lying
- Be confident saying 'I don't know'.
- And asking 'Why is that?' or 'How does that work?'.
- Don't be overconfident on subjects you don't know much about.
1. Seek out one new conversation today or tomorrow
2. Practice listening 80%-90% of the time
3. Use active listening to ask good questions
4. Repeat