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Here’s a secret: the trick to good conversation isn’t having some brilliant insight. Don’t get me wrong, it feels awesome to drop some knowledge or wit, but it’s not the key thing you need to do to be personable.
The way is to make other people feel good. That means practising a thing called ‘active listening’. Ask open ended questions. Paraphrase what they say back, and see if you’ve got it right. Everyone has something they know a lot about. Remember what we said earlier about it feeling awesome to drop some knowledge? Your goal in a conversation is to find what other people excel at, and give them the chance to drop that knowledge.
It depends on the situation, like that question would be natural to ask if you're meeting someone for the first time, but if you're at work talking to a coworker you don't know super well but have talked with before, it would be more natural to tie it in with something like "so what did you do on the weekend?"
But honestly, most people love talking about themselves, so I don't think it could go that wrong.
A good thing to have, and this takes practice, is self awareness in conversation. Like, if you ask something and the other person makes a confused face, you jump in and go "sorry, that might be a weird question", but you say it with a smile or a little laugh so that it doesn't seem like you're on edge.
I was a lot worse at conversations when I was younger, what helped me immensely was going on a solo backpacking trip where I stayed in hostels and had to have tons of conversations with strangers. Obviously that's not a thing right now, but I wonder if there's some way for you to practice having conversations with strangers? I know online is a lot different than real life conversations but there's a subreddit called /r/CasualConversation, maybe you could practice talking with people there?
They’re a little direct, but on the right track. I’d suggest asking in more roundabout ways, since often people don’t know themselves what they’re passionate about, or they’re hesitant to talk about it.
The cool thing is, you can come up with laundry lists of questions beforehand, and think it through well. You only need a handful for conversation starters. Hypotheticals are good.
One of my favourites is “If you were guaranteed a steady salary for your life, what would you do?” It gets people fantasising about what they’re passionate about. Then from there you can ask “how come?” to whatever answer they give. That should give you enough to spin off into whatever they’re interested in.
If you wanna go down the work route, you can ask what they do for a living, and then follow up by asking what the best and worst parts of the job are. People generally like making value judgements, and it gives you a chance to empathise with their shitty, capitalism-induced situation, and gives some insight into what they like.
Something to keep in mind, as @evilgiraffemonkey says, is that weird questions can be salvaged with some self-awareness. A little bit of awkwardness and discomfort can work out, so long as you exercise some social nous and pull back and patch up.
If you want to practise, then anonymous chat apps like Omegle and Whisper can be decent. It’s mostly all bored people, and there’s no social cost for trying stuff out.
The only way I can be confident in group conversations with people I don’t know well is with alcohol :agony:
Yeah, I agree with everyone else talking about active listening. Apart from asking questions to get the other person to continue, there's this thing called "backchanelling", which is basically just saying "uh-huh", nodding, "huh, really?" etc. So not full responses, but just encouragements to get the other person to keep going. You can get pretty far with just that lol. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backchannel_(linguistics)
One other thing I find useful is having basic knowledge about whatever is the big new thing atm. At the moment, most everyone has an opinion on corona, and the hot new show is probably Queen's Gambit. You don't have to start getting into the nitty gritty - you don't even have to watch the hot new show - but if you think of a few things to say on each topic, you can reuse it with basically every person. Say, if there's a lull in the conversation you can go "Oh have you seen that new Netflix show The Queen's Gambit? Yeah the chess one. I haven't checked it out yet. I guess it must be good though - I heard that stores are running out of chess sets because so many people are buying them as Christmas presents!" And with that you can transition into chess (do you play?) or Christmas (what's your plans for Christmas?) or Netflix shows (watched anything good lately?), depending on their response.
Thanks for the explanation of backchanneling. I know someone who NEVER does this, and perhaps now I can explain to him why it's so frustrating
Yeah, I think some people consider it really polite to never ever interrupt the speaker, while others consider it impolite not to add backchanneling responses. The frequency (and probably type) of backchanneling is culture-dependent and affected by gender [norms] as well (e.g. http://www.lingref.com/cpp/wss/1/paper1012.pdf), idk if you might have a mismatch with your friend. Personally I greatly prefer overly enthusiastic backchanneling over none haha, I get nervous when I'm speaking for a bit and there's no response from the listener except polite silence and an inquisitive stare.
Holy shit this post made me realize how long its been since I've even tried. In a lot of ways I feel so much happier without social obligations...on the other damn I should try to talk to people again.
If social obligations feel like a burden to you, its possible you may be censoring parts of yourself to avoid rejection by others. Just a thought though, I'm not you.
I'm sure this is an anxiety thing. I used to be really bad at this too, but I have gotten better over the years. Your mind will have things to say but its censoring itself because you think that those things are not interesting or that people will think you're weird/not likeable etc from saying them.
It's also interesting that this seems to be more of a problem when people are talking to people they are attracted to, which fits with this hypothesis.
The trick is to keep the convo on topic with banal statements while you think of something to say. Try agreeing with them but in a roundabout way that allows them to extrapolate on the topic.
who cares if theyre two topics past you? drag the conversation back to where youre at, and if they dont like it, they can fuck off.
your input is worth hearing, even if theyve started talking about something else.
edit: basically, find some people that value the conversation, rather than filling the silence with noise
Honestly I’m more likely to blurt out shit without thinking at any opportunity, it’s taken me years of training to actually not talk over people or shit like that, so it takes a mixture of both tactics :P you’re halfway there
People watching is super normal, as long as you aren't oggling/leering, but kinda watching people from afar or out of the corner of your eye.
The locking up thing though, I can see that making people uncomfortable. Is it compulsive or a conscious tactic? If the latter, maybe try to do it out of the way of your coworkers, if you can. If not, it depends how obvious it is. Maybe you could just say "sorry, sometimes I get dizzy?" if the action looks similar to a dizzy person steadying themselves? That's only if you get looks when it happens.
I feel your pain comrade. As trite as it sounds, this is definitely something you get better at with practice. Like others here have said, throw in filler words and reactions to show that you're engaged and listening. And consciously practicing what @KiaKaha said below about "active listening" has really helped me too.
Also it pains me to recommend this because its so self help-y and I can't stand that website, but this article actually helped me a lot too: https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/social-briefing-7-initiate-small-talk-using-method/
Yeah used to have the same issue, my general thoughts:
-I ended up hanging out a lot with another guy who was really good at reacting to stuff and it kind of rubbed off. I just started faking not knowing stuff. Showing interest in other people never really worked for me, because I feel like sometimes at can come across as being desperate or "needy" for interaction, which scares people who are just trying to vibe or whatever. So yeah, just find a laid back dumbass-adjacent person (real or fake) and try and channel them. start throwing in filler words like "no way" "fucking guy" "yeah, he would." Those are probably goofy examples but yeah that vibe. Basically I feel like it's easier sometimes to get people to talk without putting in (or feeling comfortable/able to put in) a lot of effort yourself if you just fill the "no way lol" soundboard role. Which sounds demeaning, but if it works then people think you're chill and everything else is a lot easier.
-It's easier said than done, but just not caring as much lol. Like when you care about having things to say and not being invisible, it can work against you, because you become too self-aware of every comment you were too slow on giving and all the dead-space in one on one convos. Of course if you care to little then you're just blackpilled and wont really solve the situation either. Basically just acknowledging that sometimes it's just not gonna happen, and if you dont let on that you're disappointed then sometimes you wont actually feel disappointed. Or maybe I'm just toxic lol.
-if possible finding super low stakes conversations that you wont care how they go. Like for me I kinda got roped into a volunteering opportunity in my late teens/early college years where I ended up talking a lot with people who were a adults/old folks. I ended up getting a lot of chances to just kind of vibe and have low stakes convos, but because they weren't really my peers, and I didn't totally care what they thought of me, there wasn't any beating myself up afterwards. Basically just getting a muscle memory for conversations, building up filler words and phrases that signal your casually interested but not "needing" a conversation or trying to make something happen. And like it's okay to have needs, I think it's easier in casual IRL convos to act like you dont lol.
-if you feel stuck in a rut with a particular group your around a lot, it's okay to just kinda give up on it for a but as long as you try and get practice somewhere else.
But yeah idk what the fuck I'm really talking about, basically it sucks but in my case faking it and developing a sort of "laid back big lebowski" vibe did end up kind of working out. And in the long run I think it kind of helped, like being in your position forces you to think a lot harder than people who never have trouble carrying on a conversation, so once you do eventually get comfortable I think you'll have an edge.
I used to volunteer for a program that helped adults improve their social skills. Here's a link to the site. It has powerpoints on a range of topics but here's one on conversation skills: https://sites.google.com/view/accessprogram/week-15-conversational-skills?authuser=0
