Books about how to be likable and charismatic often say things like:
LOOK make eye contact when people are talking to you (but look away occasionally so as not to be creepy, and look away for a greater proportion of the time when you’re talking since that’s what people do naturally)
REPEAT reflect back to people what they’ve said to you (e.g., “So you’re saying that…”)
ASK get people talking about themselves by asking questions, and follow up to their responses with further questions (e.g., “It sounds like you don’t like your work, why is that?”)
DISCOVER figure out what the person you’re talking to really cares about and talk to them about those things (e.g., “How did you originally get interested in painting?”)
MIMIC copy the body language of the person you’re talking to (e.g., if they sit up tall, you sit up tall)
COMPLIMENT give genuine compliments and make the person feel liked
REWARD make sure the other person feels good during the interaction and enjoys it.
I think this advice is largely accurate. People would tend to be more liked on average if they did more of these things. Very specific and explicit advice like this can also, I think, be very helpful for people whose social instincts are not well-tuned or who find socializing especially difficult.
But this advice can also sometimes come off as robotic (“generate these inputs to the system to cause a certain response output”) or even manipulative when used in pursuit of personal gain (“run this social algorithm and people will come to like and trust you so that you can get what you want”).
I think there is a simpler and more genuine distillation of the above advice, namely:
Give the person you’re interacting with your complete, genuine, interested attention.
That means paying attention to nothing but that other person during a conversation; letting go of any distracting thoughts that pop into your mind and not paying attention to other things happening in the room. It also means adopting a genuine interest in the other person (e.g., curiosity about them, or a desire to know them or see the valuable things in them). I’m not advocating simply appearing like you are giving your complete interested attention. I’m suggesting that you actually be focused and interested in the other person. This is not necessarily easy to do.
To understand the mindset I’m referring to a bit better, consider this metaphor. Imagine you’re going to an art gallery that you’ve heard (from a reliable source) has incredible, complex art that requires effort to understand. In that circumstance, you might approach each piece of art with “interested attention.” You’re assuming there is something worth seeing there, so even if, at first, you don’t “get” a piece, you’re going to keep focussing on it with interest to try to uncover its value. This interest is genuine before you even know what the value is because you’re giving the benefit of the doubt. If you start thinking about what you’re having later for lunch or glancing ahead prematurely to the next piece of art, it’s going to interfere with the experience. The “interested attention” causes you to notice more that’s of value, but also, potentially to value more of what you notice.
Contrast this with a situation where a friend dragged you unwillingly to an art gallery, and you’ve heard the art is terrible. You may pay little attention to each piece and view the art with little interest. If you don’t understand a piece right away, you may immediately move on to the next one. This is the opposite of “interested attention.”
While interested attention does not necessarily cause all the “likable” behaviors listed above, I think that it does tend to make them significantly more likely. Hence, I think it will tend to make you more likable.
Here’s why:
LOOK the more focused attention you have on someone, the more of a tendency I think you’ll have to look right at them, and therefore to make eye contact.
REPEAT if you are interested in someone, you’ll want to actually understand what they’re saying, and repeating back your current understanding is a natural way to confirm that you got it right.
ASK if you’re truly interested in someone, you’ll tend to ask them questions rather than spending most of the time talking about yourself.
DISCOVER interest in a person tends to make us want to understand them, and figuring out what someone really cares about is an important part of that understanding.
MIMIC while full attention on another person may not cause you to cross your legs when they cross theirs, it will presumably make you more likely to notice what they are feeling, and therefore to respond to it appropriately. So if you notice the other person is somber, with a sunken posture, you may well adopt a more somber tone and posture to adopt.
COMPLIMENT if you are giving someone your interested attention, you’re assuming there is something worth knowing about them, which presumably makes it easier to see their positive qualities, setting you up to give compliments.
REWARD it usually feels good to have another person be genuinely interested in us and even to have someone pay deep attention to us.
So if we give our genuine and complete interested attention, I expect it will tend to cause others to like being around us for a variety of reasons. And it’s good for both us and those we are around. Plus, it feels less icky than ticking a bunch of charisma boxes, especially if we replace the goal of being likable or charismatic with the goal of deeply connecting with others.
But how do we actually give interested attention to someone?
– try to make sure we are actually fully focused on them when they speak
– try to make sure we understand what they are trying to communicate
– let stray or distracting thoughts go when they occur during conversion
– not let ourselves become distracted by whatever else is happening in the room (unless it is something we can bring into the conversation) by returning focus to the person we are speaking to
– avoid checking our phones around others
– give others the benefit of the doubt
– assume others have true value even if they haven’t shown it to us yet
– foster our curiosity for what other people are like
Now, of course, it’s not always appropriate to give someone interested attention, for instance, if that person seems to themselves lack interest in continuing the interaction, or if that person seems to be responding negatively, or if there is limited time for the interaction. Maybe the other person wants to be left alone, and if so, we should go away.
Furthermore, there are, of course, many cases where we don’t desire to forge a deeper connection with a person, and there’s nothing wrong with that. We may not be in the mood, or not like the other person, or think that giving too much attention would signal something we don’t want to signal, or simply need to end the interaction soon.
But when we do want to create stronger connections, I think we should strive to give each other our complete and genuine interested attention. It’s not easy, but it’s probably worth it.
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