Read Between The Lines: Master Conversations & Truly Connect!

Hello, listeners. Welcome to Social Skills Coaching, where you learn to be more likable, more charismatic, and more productive. Today is April 10, 2024. Today we dive into the world of better conversations. Based on the book, Improve Your Conversations by Patrick King will be uncovering strategies to go beyond what's literally said and truly connect with others. Thanks for joining us today.

Rule of Improv Comedy: Whatever someone is communicating, they did for a reason, so react to further that reason. One of the biggest challenges faced by neophyte conversationalists and improv players is reading people accurately. It’s definitely a skill that requires practice. I distinctly remember an instance of speaking to a fellow attorney at a networking event years ago. I had said multiple times that I needed to find the bathroom, and that I

needed to go soon, but he just didn’t take the hint. Every time I would say it, he would launch into another story about himself. I eventually realized he couldn’t read people; it was like trying to read Chinese for him, and he was not Chinese. Finally, I interrupted him mid-story and waltzed away gracefully. Learn to hear between the lines It didn’t take a mastermind to read me in that situation, but rarely is reading people’s

emotions and state of mind so clear and obvious. Players in improv comedy have to do the impossible on a daily basis—ascertain what someone is trying to communicate based on very few cues. At first, you might not catch the cues. Once you learn what they are, you’ll start to spot them more and more. As you get better, you’ll be able to see them coming before

they even emerge, because there are certain patterns that always arise. That’s how it is with improv comedy and that’s how it is with conversation. For instance, an eye roll can mean many things in isolation, but when you pair an eye roll with bored body language and a scoff, it probably means that someone is bored with you. Getting better at reading people is the first step to this chapter’s rule of reacting

to everything, as it allows you to know exactly what you are reacting to. You wouldn’t react to a story about a friend’s death with laughter, so it’s important that your read and your response are congruent with each other. Sometimes we instinctually just know, like when we laugh when a friend tells a bad joke, or when someone shows you a video and you know that you’re supposed to laugh when they do. How can you read people better? It starts with what they talk about, and how much they

talk about it. In fact, for the purposes of this book, that’s the most important part. Just listen to them. Sounds easy, but many people mess this part up because they’re simply not paying attention to the information right in front of them (kind of like that attorney I mentioned). Once you understand that conversation is actually about so much more than the words coming out of people’s mouths, you start to notice all the things you never paid attention to before.

People drop hints in conversation all the time. There’s a reason they bring up what they bring up, and a meaning behind what they seem to want to dwell on. It’s a useful thought to keep in the back of your mind: why did they do such-and-such? Why did they say this and not that? What is the point of this story they’re telling? There’s a reason people speak in deeper, specific detail about some things, and will

continually steer the conversation back even after they go on a tangent. The subject is important to them and they want to share it with you. For example, if someone keeps talking about their dog, or seems to mention their pet in an offhand manner multiple times, this is a breadcrumb for you to follow, Inspector Holmes. Rarely will people say, “I want to talk about my dog, listen to me now,” as opposed to shoehorning it semi-organically into an existing conversation.

You’re looking for these breadcrumbs that others want you to pick up on so they can talk about what they want. Let me backtrack and reiterate. People will literally tell you what they’re interested in by what they talk about. They’ll either bring it up spontaneously and on their own,

or speak about a subject with a measure of excitement and joy. Those are your indicators for how to read people, but they require you to really pay attention to the other person and above all else, stop speaking so you can hear them. If your conversation partner doesn’t have energy or excitement about a topic, or they appear to switch topics spontaneously, then it’s clear that they aren’t interested

in it. People won’t outright say that they want to talk about certain topics, so it’s up to you to pick up on their hints and react accordingly. Of course, there is also the non-verbal portion of reading people. For the purposes of this book, we’ll keep it simple. You have to know only one thing: the baseline of body language of the other person. In other words, what are someone’s facial expressions and body language when they feel normal and aren’t expressing a strong emotion?

For example, some people might naturally be bubbly and speak with their hands, and others might be as still as a wooden doll even when they’re ecstatic. This baseline can let you know when someone deviates from it, and then you can interpret their body language accordingly. If the aforementioned person who is incredibly still even when happy shows a hint of motion and emotion, you can safely assume that they are overjoyed, or upset, by something.

Again, these are the breadcrumbs that people want you to find, and this is especially true the better people get with conversation. Conversation at the highest levels becomes all shades of gray and subtlety because both parties pick up on the signals being exchanged. Much of what it is said during an exchange of witty banter is subtext and between the lines, so to speak, because both parties operate on multiple levels.

Here are some common breadcrumbs: The excitement, or lack thereof, in someone’s voice when you bring up a topic. If someone keeps trying to bring up a topic, this means they want to talk about it. If someone keeps looking away, this means that they are bored. If someone’s feet are pointed away from you, this means they want to stop talking to you.

If you interrupted someone right as they were about to speak, ask them about it after you finish speaking to see what direction they were interested in going. See if you can tell if their smiles and laughs are fake or real, depending on how big they are and how quickly they fade or stop. If someone ignores what you say and goes back to what they were talking about before you spoke, they feel strongly about their point and want to expand on it.

If someone leans their head on their hand, this means they might be bored with the current flow of the conversation. Look for how strongly someone nods in agreement with you, and on the flip side, how little excitement or emotion there is in their reaction. Listen for emotion The final aspect of getting better at instantly reading people is to think in terms of emotions. Whatever someone says or demonstrates to you through their body, they are doing it to create

an emotional response. People talk to each other for a reason—they want to make some kind of impact on the world, or influence your opinion somehow, or simply get you to like them. A story about their dog feeding a kitten? They want a happy smile. A story about being cut off in traffic? They want shared agony. A statement about their foot being run over by a bike? They want a laugh.

These are all emotions that people want to evoke in you, so give it to them! That’s the final aspect in a nutshell: proactively think about the underlying emotion people want to evoke in you, and then give it to them. It sounds like it would be incredibly difficult to do in the spur of the moment, but it’s easier than you think since there are only so many emotions that others might want back from you. Joy. Anger. Humor. Annoyance. Amazement. Curiosity.

If you think about most of what people have told you in the past week, and what you have told others, that short list covers almost all the bases for the emotional responses that were sought. They encompass the bulk of the reasons that we share stories about our lives. It’s a simple switch in perspective, but look beyond the story to see the reason for the story. A story about their dog feeding a kitten—what is the reason that someone is telling you

about this? Is it so you can feel annoyance? Amazement? Joy? It’s probably a combination of humor and joy. Show them that you understand and give them the reaction they expected. In fact, exaggerate your reactions. Not by too much, just enough so that the emotion you’re feeling is unmistakable. Just like that, you’ve communicated with someone, and made a connection. You’ve made someone feel heard. That special something that makes good conversations feel so satisfying? This is what it’s made of.

There is a thin line between being emotionally touched by somebody's shared information, and mocking that person by caricaturing their emotions. If you go overboard, you may seem like you're mocking and patronizing your conversation partner. They will feel judged and insulted. Instead, jump on board with them and their emotion. If they come to you with a story about how they were slighted, first show the appropriate matching emotion in a way that

will make them feel acknowledged and validated. That’s what matters first in reacting. What you do next can be any mixture of asking questions or validating their experience more thoroughly, but the initial reaction makes the biggest impact. People have different levels of emotional intensity, and the middle of the bell curve

as far as emotional expression is concerned can be quite wide. This simply means that people perceive and experience emotions differently, so what you think is an indulgent and overboard reaction may not register at all for someone else. This is the case for most people. They think they are conveying a message, but in reality have only managed a frown or smile. It therefore pays to be slightly dramatic and overboard with your emotional reaction,

just to ensure that you aren’t being too subtle for your own good. Some of us have poker faces far more than we realize, so exaggeration is sometimes necessary to get our message across. Plus, a big reaction makes people feel good, as if they have bestowed us with valuable information.   Be generous with your attention A conversation is a two-way street. You can't just say what you want, wait while the other person is talking, and then say

what you want again as if they merely interrupted you. It's not just a simple matter of waiting for your turn to speak. Conversation is about mutual sharing that leads to mutual listening and learning, otherwise it’s just two monologues being directed toward each other. Hopefully, if you can acknowledge the importance of what the other person is saying when speaking back to them, then they will do the same to you because they’ll feel heard, validated, respected, and important.

This is going to feel unnatural and uncomfortable for some, but if you want your conversations to go deeper and last longer, you need to play this game. Reactions aren’t natural to all of us, and we may not even care about most of the things that people say. However, the goal is to improve our conversations, and you can’t improve if you don’t investigate new things that are outside of your comfort zone.