How to have a conversation when the person is a complete stranger? Does this question ever cross your mind? Do you find it difficult to initiate a conversation?
Starting and holding a conversation is an art.
Unlike your pesky relatives, you don’t have to make efforts to start off with a conversation. They’ll do it for you and drive you crazy at a party or wedding.
Apart from jokes, when it comes to converse with a complete stranger at a party or at school you run out of topics. You’d probably taste that awkward silence or exchange a few conscious smiles with the person.
I remember the timid girl, I was in my childhood. While other girls were good at talking to teachers, I avoided having conversations with them. The consciousness of how to have a conversation with a person elder to me would hold me back.
When I was out of school, I realized that it was the need of the hour to know how to converse with people of diversified nature. Slowly, as years passed, I discovered how important it was to hone the skill of talking to people.
Keeping in mind the importance of this, let me walk you through this blog and help you inculcate the art of conversing.
1. Be an active listener
If you are not a good listener you can never be good at communication. Learn to listen to what people have to say. Try and understand what kind of a person he/she is.
In the first few seconds of your acquaintance, you’d get a gist of his/her nature. Unlike a high school debate, you cannot go prepared for a conversation. But you can always be observant.
Be all ears when people around you talk. Have the knowledge of the topics that go on in group conversations. At the same time don’t interfere while someone is talking. Be patient.
2. Remember names
If you show poor performance when it comes to memorizing people’s name, you need to overcome it. This is fine as far as mugging up names from history textbooks were concerned. If you’d forget the name of the king, you would lose marks. But when it comes to remembering peoples name, your trustworthiness is at stake.
If you forget a person’s name you may lose his trust. People may think you are not interested at all to mingle or talk to them.
When you meet someone for the first time repeat his/her name to memorize. For example say, “Nice to meet you, James”. This will help you recollect his name when you meet next time.
3. Offer a compliment
“Hey, you’re wearing a nice tie”, saying this in the middle of a conversation can boost the comfort level. A smile on the other person’s face can work wonders to hold on to the conversation.
A compliment depicts your observation and in turn your interest in the person. He automatically starts feeling nice and the conversation goes on smoothly eliminating awkwardness if any.
4. Find common interests
“Yee-haw! Even I’m a big fan of Ayushyaman’s poems”. Once you find one thing common, like interests, the conversations go on and on.
Find out the interests of the person you’re talking. But let it happen naturally. Don’t force people to open up to you, allow them to come in their comfort zone and they’ll say it themselves.
5. Stories juice-up conversations.
Be a good story-teller. Once you’ve become comfortable in a conversation make it interesting by narrating stories. The stories can be small but significant instances of a friend or a friend’s friend.
This adds value to the conversation and you come back home consummated.
6. The eyebrow raised.
The moment you feel the conversation is getting boring, use the eyebrow raised technique. Raise your eyebrows to appreciate or emphasize a point made by the person in front of you.
Also, make eye contacts. You avoid eye-contacts for you’re uncomfortable to start the conversation first. If you follow the above points religiously, you can easily initiate a conversation.
7.How to have a conversation in person if you are a textrovert(click for meaning)
I’ve found people chatting online on instant messengers so much so that when they meet in person, there’s a big question about what to talk about.
They suddenly fall short of words and the discomfort crawls in. If you land in such a situation you have the liberty of repeating things. Don’t think of what to talk about. Just start talking about that one interesting chat you have had with that person.
The conversation will spontaneously start building and may end up into huge waves of laughter. Many times, the exclamatory words you use in chats are never heard. When you hear them in person, it’s funny. It’s an awe feeling when the pronunciations or style are way different than you may have ever imagined.
8.Exit Hand-shake
Ending a conversation is also equally important as starting it. It gets confusing at times about ending a conversation especially if it is an active one.
To end it in a friendly yet professional manner, shake hands promising to meet again. You can end by saying “It was nice talking to you. See you”, with a confident handshake.
Hope the above help you in some way in life. Please share this blog with your friends who find it difficult to converse with people.
I can totally relate. Each and every word especially point 7 😁😁.
Maybe it was especially for you 😉