Mike Lehr's Blog

I’m often asked to improve employees’ “social skills” especially those who are classified as “quiet” or “introverted.” When I work with them, I establish two things first:

1. You don’t have to talk much to be a good conversationalist.
2. When people talk, especially about themselves, 95% of the time (if not 99%) they won’t notice that you aren’t talking.

Here is the major technique I teach them:

Focus on asking people questions especially open-ended ones encouraging elaboration.

I stumbled across this one day during college while visiting my brother at his college. He wasn’t at his fraternity so a fraternity brother entertained me until his return. Having driven for over eight hours, I was tired and unenthusiastic about returning any conversation. Fortunately, the fraternity brother was very talkative and it only took a few of my questions to carry him for almost forty-five minutes. Later, he told my brother what a “great conversationalist” I was.

Initially, people are skeptical, so I have them practice in social situations. In one case, I had an IT employee practice on his wife. When he saw how she ran with the conversation from his questions and how much more she enjoyed their “conversations,” he began integrating it into his work.

Focusing on asking questions works extremely well with people who might have an expertise that we don’t. This happened at a party last week. By focusing on the other person’s work, he carried the conversation for the entire twenty minutes while we ate together. I also learned quite a bit. However, as my wife has come to learn, you will begin to notice how few questions people really ask of others in conversation.

Related post:

Related post:

• Become a Good (or Better) Conversationalist Overnight (Part II)

Here is another site with some other good conversational techniques:

• 14 Methods and Mindset Tricks to Make you a More Interesting Conversationalist