Ramit Sethi tells Emily S. that social confidence is learnable, not innate. Script likely questions and responses beforehand, then notice what works and what doesn't. He compares it to learning to ride a bike: practice, fail, adjust, repeat.
Today, a question on being socially awkward. One of my favorite types of questions from I will teach reader Emily S. Who asks, how did you approach companies or people when you don't have any confidence? I seem to go mentally blank and the words don't come out at all. They're backwards and they're not in order. Alright, I love this question because so many people feel this way and almost by definition, the people who feel this way will never ask for help. So this is perfect. In the comfort of your own home on some random anonymous blog, you asked me this question and it is my privilege to answer you. First of all, I love this question because I used to feel like this all the time. I would go into meetings or I would go to some weird event where I didn't know anyone and I would just stand there and if I did approach people, it went disastrously. It would be awkward, there'd be two people talking and I would go up and I would just stand there like this. And then I would wait for them to talk to me and then they wouldn't and then I would just leave. No. Good. So what I learned over time was, as weird as this sounds, you can practice this. Okay? This is important. It may feel weird, but in the grand scheme, who cares how weird it feels because you're actually going to master this skill. Step one is to actually write down possible questions and answers. And in global Fortune 100 terms, this is called scenario planning. See, every Fortune 100 company has a scenario planning group. And what these groups do is they literally plan out 10, 20, 30 years of contingencies. What if the price of wheat goes up? How will that affect our agricultural supply? What if this country goes into civil war? How's that going to affect our revenue? And they plan out all kinds of contingencies, just like the military does, so that when that time comes, if it ever comes, they pull out that report and they've got a general plan of what to do. Now, is that weird for those companies? They don't think it's weird at all. They spend millions and millions of dollars doing it. So why can't we spend a few minutes on a fresh sheet of paper writing out questions like, what brought you here? How do you know Mike? Oh, so are you interested in working out whatever? And then as you ask these questions, you'll learn that, for example, those first two questions were good. That last one was really weird and is going to elicit awkward responses. Now, is it weird to script out a conversation? Yeah, it's kind of weird. And You're a weirdo if you're watching this video, so let's just accept that. However, I think it's weird to never plan anything, continue being socially awkward for your whole life, and never get to grow past that plateau. So when I first started, I would absolutely script out, what if they say this? What am I going to say? What if they don't say anything? How am I going to handle that? What if there are two people? And I would script it all out. So that's step one, scripting out possible questions and answers, really, in a scenario planning type of way. Number two is to actually notice the responses you get. So I've always said socially dysfunctional people have two issues. One, they're socially dysfunctional. Two, they don't notice they're socially dysfunctional. Okay, in my case, when I was younger, maybe to some extent today, I was socially dysfunctional, but at least I noticed it when it happened. So I would go into a meeting and I would start talking about random stuff that had nothing to do with anything. And people around the table would be like, this fucking weirdo. How did he get in this room? And I was like, okay, I said something wrong here or I'm doing something wrong. I don't know what, but at least I noticed it. This is what I'm going to encourage you to do. If you walk into this event and you use your scenario planning and you ask a question and they look at you like you know you did something wrong. So make a mental note of that. When you go home, go to that question and put a big old X through it, you know you're never going to ask that question again. However, if you find a question that engages people like, oh, how do you know Mike? What brought you here? And. And they're like, oh, I know him because we were in college together. That's a great question. That's a big green check mark right there. Over time, this will become much more natural to you. You will not have to script out a bunch of questions. Just like when you first started off riding a bike, it was, push this pedal down, but lift this pedal up. And now you just get on a bike and you ride it. It's natural. The same thing will happen when you approach companies. When you approach people, you're not sure how to do it. You. You first have to start at a very tactical, transactional way. But over time, you notice what works. You do more of that. You notice what doesn't work. You do less of that, and you will become to outsiders what seems like a natural, when, in truth, you've gotten to mastery through systematic, repeated practice. Great question.
