The cynical believe that most people are just waiting for their turn to speak in conversation. Beat the trope by listening and rephrasing what your partner tells you back to them. This is one way to become a more likeable conversation partner.
Picture: Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung/Flickr
As tips blog Barking Up the Wrong Tree explains, rephrasing what your conversation partner tells you is an exercise in attentive listening. It forces you to pay attention and retain key facts. However, it also has the added benefit of making you more likeable. Most people enjoy it when someone pays attention to them and understands. If you can effectively summarise what they’re telling you, they’re likely to appreciate it:
A little game I like to play is “Can I summarise what the person just said to their satisfaction?” If you repeat back the gist of what they communicated and they respond, “Exactly” you’re doing great.
Of course, this method requires an element of passively listening. You can’t simply use a mental thesaurus to change a few words. However, if you make the effort to understand the person’s point of view and explain how you interpret it, they’re more likely to respond positively to you.
How To Be Someone People Love To Talk To [Barking Up the Wrong Tree]
Comments
5 responses to “Rephrase What Your Partner Says To Be More Likeable In Conversation”
Isn’t there a danger these articles are teaching people to become sycophants or worse, using such techniques to take advantage of people?
You could be right. There may be a danger that these articles are teaching people to become sycophants or worse, using such techniques to take advantage of people.
(see what I did there)
Psychopaths never had it so easy.
“What I’m getting from this conversation is, I shouldn’t have slept with your sister or take money from your purse in order to buy her dinner and the most expensive bottle of wine there?”
No. Clearly (from the rest of the sentence) that is just the other person’s opinion. Try:
“So what you’re saying is, I shouldn’t have …”.
That way there’s less of an admission of guilt (which clearly there shouldn’t be).