How to Make People Like You in 90 Seconds or Less - By Nicholas Boothamn
Date read: 2016-02-06How strongly I recommend it: 8/10
(See my list of 150+ books, for more.)
Go to the Amazon page for details and reviews.
Don't get turned off by the cheezy title. This book has a lot of great tips to make a good first impression.
Contents:
- FIRST CONTACT
- BUILDING RAPPORT
- COMMUNICATION
- SYNCHRONIZING
- CONVERSATION
- SENSING
- VISUALS
- AUDITORIES
- KINESTHETICS
My Notes
Greetings are broken into five parts: Open—Eye—Beam—Hi!—Lean.
Keep your heart aimed directly at the person you’re meeting. Don’t cover your heart with your hands or arms and, when possible, unbutton your jacket or coat.
Be first with eye contact. Look this new person directly in the eye.
Beam! Be the first to smile. Let your smile reflect your attitude.
Be the first to identify yourself.
Take the lead. Extend your hand to the other person, and if it’s convenient find a way to say his or her name two or three times to help fix it in memory.
The final part of introducing yourself is the “lean.” This action can be an almost imperceptible forward tilt to very subtly indicate your interest and openness as you begin to “synchronize” the person you’ve just met.
The “hands-free” handshake is a handshake without the hand, and it is a powerful tool. Just do everything you would do during a normal handshake but without using your hand.
Let your mouth open slightly in a smile as your eyebrows arch and your head tilts back a little with anticipation as you look directly at an imaginary person.
The key to establishing rapport with strangers is to learn how to become like them.
When we set out to establish rapport by design, we purposely reduce the distance and differences between another person and ourselves by finding common ground.
In face-to-face situations, your attitude precedes you. It is the central force in your life — it controls the quality and appearance of everything you do.
Everyone has a “favorite sense.” Find this sense and you have the key to unlock a person’s heart and mind.
Connection lies at the very heart of those three pillars of our democratic civilization: government, religion and television.
Likability has something to do with how you look but a lot more to do with how you make people feel.
Likable people give loud and clear signals of their willingness to be sociable; they reveal that their public communication channels are open. Embedded in these signals is evidence of self-confidence, sincerity and trust. Likable people expose a warm, easygoing public face with an outgoing radiance that states, “I am ready to connect. I am open for business.” They are welcoming and friendly, and they get other people’s attention.
1) your presence, i.e., what you look like and how you move; 2) your attitude, i.e., what you say, how you say it and how interesting you are; and 3) how you make people feel.
There are three parts to connecting with other people: meeting, establishing rapport and communicating.
As you meet and greet new people, your ability to establish rapport will depend on four things: your attitude, your ability to “synchronize” certain aspects of behavior like body language and voice tone, your conversation skills and your ability to discover which sense (Visual, Auditory or Kinesthetic) the other person relies on most.
Find something to set you apart from the rest. Give them something to remember you by.
The formula for effective communication has three distinct parts:
Research has shown that we have approximately 90 seconds to make a favorable impression when we first meet someone.
Congruity occurs when your body, voice tone and words are all in alignment.
Make sure that your words, your tonality and your gestures are all saying the same thing.
If your gestures, tone and words do not say the same thing, people will believe the gestures.
Like the hair dryer or the electric shaver, you must have an adapter. So think of synchronizing as an adapting device that allows you to make smooth connections at will and quickly.
Think of synchronizing as rowing your boat alongside another person’s rowboat, pointing it in the same direction at the same speed and picking up the other person’s pace, stroke, breathing pattern, mood and point of view.
Pick up on other people’s feelings. Synchronize their movements, breathing pattern and expression as you “deeply identify” with them. Tune in to the overall mood suggested by their voice and reflect it back.
Synchronizing body language falls into two loose groupings: matching, which means doing the same thing as the other person and mirroring, which means, as it implies, moving as if you were watching the other person in a mirror.
Open questions request an explanation and thus require the other person to do the talking. Closed questions elicit a “yes” or “no” response.
A simple formula for striking up a conversation: begin with a statement about the location or occasion, then ask an open question.
Open questions begin with one of six conversation-generating words: Who? When? What? Why? Where? How?
An interesting aside: When meeting someone for the first time, North Americans tend to ask, “What do you do?” whereas Europeans prefer “Where are you from?”
In all of these situations, give the other person about three chances to interact. If after three questions or comments, he or she is clearly not responding enthusiastically, don’t make a pest of yourself.
Give spoken feedback. Get inside what the person is saying. This kind of feedback ranges from “Primal Sighs” and “International Grunts” like “Wow,” “Aha,” “Oh” and “Hm.”
Give physical feedback. Use open, encouraging body language. Nod in agreement and use plenty of eye contact, but don’t stare.
All conversation, big or small, is about painting word pictures of your experiences for other people.
Accept all compliments graciously. Do it simply. Do it directly. Avoid the temptation to be too modest or self-effacing. The standard two-word response to a compliment is “Thank you.”
Specific compliments usually come across as being more sincere than general compliments.
Don’t interrupt, and don’t end other people’s sentences for them, no matter how enthusiastic or impatient you might be.
Whenever possible, avoid giving one-word answers.
There’s nothing quite so disconcerting as talking to someone who is looking elsewhere.
Look out for bad breath and all the other nasty personal hygiene stuff.
People could be roughly divided into three types, depending on how they filtered the world through their senses. They called these types Visual, Auditory and Kinesthetic.
Studies have shown that as many as 55% of all people in our culture are motivated primarily by what they see (Visual), 15% by what they hear (Auditory) and 30% by physical sensation (Kinesthetic).
Figure out which sense a person relies on most and change your approach to take this into consideration.
The ability to tune in to the way other people experience the world can be one of the most important discoveries of your life.
Metaphors appeal simultaneously to Visuals, Auditories and Kinesthetics.
Metaphors help to make understanding easier, quicker and richer.
When asked a question, people often have to look away in order to generate the answer. The reason is quite simple: they are accessing their senses.
When we look to the left, we are remembering information, while looking the other way, to the right, means we are constructing it.
Four steps of rapport by design to “connect” with his customer:
Look good for the Visuals.
Visuals usually talk very fast.
Visuals tend to use picture words.
Visual people care a lot about how things look. They need to see proof, or evidence, before they take anything seriously. Being visualizers, they think in pictures and wave their hands around, sometimes touching their pictures when talking.
People who answer such questions while looking up to the left or right are most likely visualizing their answer.
Sound good; develop your pleasing tonality for the Auditories to whom you’ll be speaking.
Auditories choose sound words.
Auditories fall somewhere in between talking speed.
Auditory people respond emotionally to the quality of sound. They enjoy the spoken word and love conversation — but things must sound right for them to tune in and give their attention. They have fluid, melodic, sensitive, persuasive, expressive voices. “Audis” move their eyes from side to side as they talk and gesture somewhat less than Visuals; but when they do, it’s from side to side, like their eye movements.
Audis work where words and sound are the currency. Many broadcasters, teachers, lawyers, counselors and writers are Auditory.
If they look left or right toward their ears, they are probably recalling sound information.
Kinesthetics favor physical words.
Be sensitive and flexible for the Kinesthetic folk.
Kinesthetics tend to talk slowly.
For our sensitive “Kinos,” things have to be solid, well constructed and right-feeling in order for them to go along. They have lower, easygoing voices and gestures.
When they speak, Kinos will look down, toward their feelings. They enjoy the way things feel. They like textured clothing with quiet tones. Any man with permanent facial hair may well be Kinesthetic.
Kinos have a tendency to favor “picture” words and metaphors: “if we look more clearly,” “the difference was like night and day.”
If they look down to the left, they may well be accessing their feelings, and down to the right indicates some type of internal dialogue.