Improve Your Social Skills in Under 30 Minutes, with Ramit Sethi

Today I want to talk about social skills and how I used to be a freak of nature. 127 pounds. As I like to tell people, I had the dimensions of a supermodel, a female supermodel. And I want to talk to you about how important social skills are right now. I'm not saying I'm the best at social skills. That's not the case at all. I'm told that I don't smile enough, that I'm not vulnerable enough, that I'm cold sometimes. There are many things people say to me, and those are the nice things, by the way. But I learned over time how to talk to people in different situations. For example, I used to not know how to talk to women, right? I would come across. I might be able to get people to laugh, but I was almost like the clown. And I didn't know how to be masculine. I wasn't sure how to be a man. Same thing was true of talking to people at cocktail parties or random events. I would go up to them, I would shake their hand. I knew that much. And then I wouldn't know how to carry the conversation. How do you make it interesting? How do you present yourself as someone memorable? How do you actually learn about someone beneath the surface of oh, who are you? And what brought you here? And things like that? So what I want to do is show you how I went from that to some of the things I do now. Now, I. I'll routinely speak in front of 100 or even thousands of people. I'll appear on national TV. I'll do things in one take, which I love doing. I don't want to waste my time. Let me get in front of the camera. Be done. So what I want to do is show you an example of me appearing on a national TV show and analyze what's going on in terms of social skills. Here, take a look. Most of the work is done before you ever walk in that room, making sure that you're a top performer, asking your boss what it would take to get a compensation adjustment and then actually exceeding those goals and letting your boss know. Now, what I just did there wasn't very obvious, but I did it for a reason. When I held out my fingers and said, and basically did 1, 2, 3, I did that because anchors are very quick to start speaking again. This segment is very, very short, and they want to get right back to the message. So when I'm doing 1, 2, and 3 with my fingers, I'm subtly signaling her that I'm still going with my points. And you'll notice at the end, I lowered my voice to let her know that I was done making my point. And just like I'm about to lower my voice now, you'll know when I'm done speaking. Say you should go in there knowing that even in this economy, there's still a shot for you to have a raise. Absolutely. People don't believe it. The first thing they say is, well, maybe that works for that guy or that woman. What I did there was. I realized I jumped the gun. I started off speaking very, very quickly. So instead of speaking very, very quick like this, I slowed it down. I made an expansive gesture and slowed down my speaking. Sometimes in the middle of a sentence, you'll realize that you're speaking very, very quickly. And then you can actually slow it down and get more in control of your voice. What may seem really slow to you is actually seems highly credible to other people, but not for me. Yeah, you worry that you're gonna go in and, like, upset your boss. He's gonna say, what are you talking about? In this economy, you expect to get more money. Yeah, that's because most people believe. They walk in and say, I want more money, and the boss says no, and they walk out embarrassed. That's not the way. Now, what I'm doing here is being very expressive now, not my face. You know, I have. I have. One of my New Year's resolutions one year was actually to smile more. But here I'm using a lot of really high pitched tone, yeah, give me money. And I'm saying, no, that doesn't work. And it's good because it mixes things up. One of the biggest challenges I see people having is they remain in the same flat monotone, speaking like this about the most exciting thing that ever happened to them, like the birth of their daughter. They still speak like this. It's just not emotionally engaging. And so to be able to get expressive with your face, face, your smile, even your intonation can be extremely powerful in getting people to pay attention to you. Now, I used to go into meetings when I was younger and, like, I'd be meeting a CEO or something, and they would say, what do you think we should do with this? Or what do you think about that? And I would start jumping into the tactics. Well, I look at your website, I really think you should change the checkboxes to radio buttons. And they'd be like, who the hell is this guy? He's speaking at this level. I'm speaking at this level. I didn't understand how to calibrate myself. So when I'd go into these meetings and I would say something, I would actually see people's eyes rolling, or people would start going like this. I mean, people would actually look at their watch like, oh, God, is this guy going to start talking again? And it really irritated me because I knew I was doing something wrong, but I didn't know what. And I would watch other people and they would start speaking and they would sound crisp, they would use intonation. And I was sitting here speaking in a really bored way, but I thought I was really interesting. And then I could tell I was not because people would be looking at their watch. Not a good place to be. So along the way, I learned a lot of little social cues, social triggers, and different things I could do to improve my social skills. I want to share a few of them with you today. Now, some of these might seem a little bit basic, like, what do you do when you walk up to someone at a cocktail party? What do you say to them? But I want to walk you through this process because I'm confident even one of these, just one, could dramatically change the way that you interact with people. And in my experience, the more and more experienced you get, your technical skills matter, but your social skills matter at an increasing rate. That's why I'm spending this time today here in studio to talk to you about some of the insights I learned in terms of social skills. And let's see what you can apply to your life starting today. Okay, so I went out to a lot of different I will teach readers. And I said, what are the challenges you have when it comes to social skills? One of the biggest was what do I do when I see someone at a party and I just want to talk to them? I'm not talking about using game and going up and negging. I'm not talking about that. Okay, we can talk about that another time. Today I'm just talking about what do you say at a professional event that can actually get a discussion started? So I'm going to give you three lines that you can use. Very simple stuff, but stuff that people don't often use, right? So one thing you can do is just go up and say, hi, nice to meet you, I'm Ramit. What brought you here? Simple, very simple. What brought you here? Then they're going to say, oh, well, I came here because I know the founder of this thing. Oh, that's interesting. How do you guys know each other? Ask another question. And now you've got a conversation started. Second thing, you Say is very simple. Hi, I'm Ramit. Hi, I'm Mike. Boom. Off to the races. Typically, in events that you go to where you're going to introduce someone, they're there to meet people as well. In fact, to reframe your mental game, you can say, look, I'm actually doing them a favor by talking to them. Why? Because no one wants to be the person who's standing at a party alone. So by going up to them, yeah, it's anxiety producing and you feel kind of weird, but trust me, they actually feel amazing that you came up to them. And here's how you know. Imagine yourself at a party. You're up there, you just got yourself a drink, you're kind of like looking around. You're about to pull your phone out, so you look busy and somebody comes up to you and says, hey, my name's John. Awesome. You feel great. Someone picked you out of this crowd to come up and talk to. You're going to be grateful, not weirded out. Okay? That's how we start changing the way we think and as well as changing our behavior. Another way you can break the ice is to simply go up to someone and say, so how do you know John? John being the name of the organizer, maybe the birthday host. So I'll give you an example. I was at a birthday party the other day. It was a birthday party for. It was a co birthday party thrown by four different people. It was at a bar. And, you know, I came up to my friend, I said, hey, how's it going? Happy birthday. And then I was mingling. So I didn't monopolize my friend's time and what do I do? So after I said hello, you know, we kind of hung out a little bit. I mingled around and I went up to people, I said, oh, so how do you know Michelle? And that was a great conversation starter because of course everyone's there, they're all supporting their friends. And then we got into some great discussions, right? Someone had to start up, someone was doing this, someone was making fun of other person's shoes. It was great. That is how you can break the ice and get that conversation started. The next thing that I will teach readers told me was, how do I keep a conversation going? So it's one thing to go up to someone and say, you know, what brought you here? Or how do you know the host? But it's another thing to kind of ask that question and then get stuck. So what do you do to keep that conversation going and going? In an interesting Direction. I want to give you a few suggestions. My biggest mistake early on was asking too many questions. Okay? So I'd be like, oh, so what brought you here? Oh, really? Do you know him? Do you know that? Oh, what do you do? And they would kind of lean back and get a little bit weirded out. Like, is this dude interrogating me? So what I would do is, instead of simply asking question after question after question, I would ask a couple questions, and then I might make a statement reflecting on what they said. I might say, that's really interesting. You know, I wouldn't have thought that would be natural to go from X to Y. But the way you say it, it makes a lot of sense. And of course, they're like, off to the races with that, right? So one thing I learned was not to ask too many questions. Typically, I know this from eavesdropping on hundreds of dates that happen next to me in the places that I write. So coffee shops and things like that. Every time a date sits next to me, I immediately go to my computer, put my headphones on mute, and then listen in for the next hour. This is what I do. And so I've been able to draw several conclusions from this. The number one is guys talk about themselves way too much. So my problem was asking too many questions. Oftentimes you have guys, especially when they're talking to women, they'll just talk too much. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Not actually asking anything about that person. They walk away. And if you were to say, like, what do you know about that person? They'd be like, I don't know. They seem really nice. They laughed at my jokes. So you want to be very careful about calibrating yourself, asking too many questions or not asking enough questions at all. Okay, here are a few ways you can keep this conversation going. So one thing you can say is, what brought you to this event? And as they tell you that, oh, you know, I'm here because my company sponsored it, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, then you follow up on the next natural question, which is, oh, what do you do? Now, that's a little bit of a cliche question, but it's an easy one that you can pull out if you need to, and you're stuck. What do you do? It gives you an opportunity to kind of practice your different answers to it. So, for example, if I say, what do you do? And someone says, oh, I'm a strategic operational consultant, I might be like, okay, that sounds really impressive. I'm just not sure I understand what it means. Or I could say, oh, wow. So do you work with all industries or do you work with just this technology industry? See how I took two totally different approaches. If I'm constantly talking to different people, I can actually test which one works better just by watching their reaction. One is kind of a fun, light hearted one. One is a more curious, serious one. Probably if we're at an event. I actually bet you that the first one would go over better. If you've calibrated your body language, one thing you can say is, you know, what was your biggest takeaway today? What was your biggest insight today? I would again test those two words. You're going to get very different responses from just testing those. One thing you can do that works really well is after listening to people, really understanding who they are, you might ask them, what do you do? Oh, are you here from out of town or are you local? Oh, I'm here from out of town. Oh, I'm from Houston. Oh, Houston. I've eaten barbecue there. So one thing you can do is also make a comment on them. You can say something like, you know, you seem pretty adventurous. You know, I know a couple of other management consultants, but I don't know anybody who does scuba divings on their off time. It seems pretty adventurous. Obviously you're complimenting them, but you're doing it in an authentic way. Why? Because you pointed out, look, I've listened to you. I know other people like you and you seem xyz. Now, you're not doing this to be a kiss ass. If you do this and you're not authentic, people will recognize it from a mile away. What you're doing though is truly listening to them and then making a comment a little bit who they are. Now, obviously if you don't have something nice to say, don't say it at all. I learned that lesson myself as well. But what you can do is show that you've been listening. It actually honors someone when you make a comment, obviously a complimentary comment saying, you know, I've really listened to who you are and it seems to me that xyz, that's really the message you're sending. They love to have their thoughts acknowledged. They love to be the center of attention. More importantly, they love that someone would take the time to actually think deeply about them and make a very informal formed, positive comment. It's like if someone came to me and they said, you know, Ramit, you seem a lot more thoughtful than I thought. You know, like on your website you kind of make these bombastic claims. You've got the I will teach you be rich name. But meeting you, it really seems like, you know, you spend a lot of time studying the psychology, the deep theory of the stuff you're talking about. I will be over the moon. I'll be so happy for the next month. Just thinking back to what that person said, of course, because it's positive, it shows me that they've really understood who I am and what would happen. I would like that person. So we're not tricking anybody here. If they said something like, ramit, you really seem, like, amazing. Like, you seem like, just awesome. Like everything you do is just so successful. It's just incredible. I want to know. I don't know how you do it, but I just want to know everything. I'd be like, you're like, kind of creeping me out. But if someone is actually thoughtful listens, that can really change the tenor of that conversation. Okay, how do you get yourself out of a conversation? Whether it's fortunate or unfortunate, I have developed a knack for extricating myself from super awkward conversations. Possibly because they happen to me so much, possibly because some of the people watching this corner me and then have these really weird conversations where I have to figure out how to get myself out of it. So. So I've tested many, many, many ways, and I'm pleased to deliver what I've learned along the way. So let's say you're in a conversation. One of two things can happen that make you want to leave. One, it's just the natural end of a conversation, right? You've kind of said hello. You've gotten to know each other great. The second thing is you just, you've kind of encountered a weirdo who's just like, you know, they're just a little bit off or they're coming on a little bit too strong. Basically every woman watching this is like, yep, that's been happening since I was 13. So you know it. But guys, we don't really have that experience of having to extricate ourselves as much. So there are classic ways to get yourself out of these things. It's very simple. If you see that the conversation is kind of dying down to a natural level, or you're just ready to leave. You don't have to make it awkward. You don't. Not at all. Classic way to do it is simply say, well, it was a pleasure meeting you, thanks for chatting. That's it. But notice that in my intonation, even in my body language, I'm signifying in every possible way that it's time for me to go. Now, if you don't do this oftentimes, and this has happened to me many times, you get stuck talking to the same person for, like, 40 minutes. You're like, why am I here talking to this person? I want to, like, mingle. I want to go get another drink. I just want to do something other than getting stuck. But, you know, sometimes we're afraid of confrontation. I know. I have been afraid of confrontation in the past. So you can use this line, you know, it was a pleasure meeting you. Thanks so much for chatting. And then you're on your way. Now, I will tell you that in a couple of situations, I've had someone who wasn't very socially receptive, and they just didn't get the message. So they're like, oh, okay, sounds good. I'll come with you. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no. So this actually just happened about a month ago. I was at a bar meeting some people. Somebody introduced me to somebody else, and. And I'm chatting with this guy. He's kind of monopolizing my time. And I was trying to make my way out of it, but he's one of those guys that. He would start a sentence, and you'd be like, okay, finally, I'm gonna get it worded. And then he would have another clause and another clause and another sentence, and then he'd tell a story. And I'm kind of like this. I'm sitting here. Please kill me right now. So I tried my line, and he actually, like, he wouldn't let me go. He's like, oh, yeah. But one thing, when I was a young lad in the blah, blah, blah. So I actually finally had to be very, very, very direct with him. I said, you know what? I really appreciated talking to you, but I've got friends here from out of town, and I've got to go talk to them now. Thanks. And he was like, oh, he finally realized that he had been kind of monopolizing my time. Almost by definition, he hadn't realized that. So that is kind of an escalation script you can use if someone's really not getting the message. But in general, 99% of the time, you can simply say, you know what? It's been a pleasure. Thanks for chatting, and you're good to go. One thing you can do to be extremely memorable is to tell stories. Now, in my dream job course, I talk about having a story toolbox. This is basically having a few stories ready. You can just pull out of your pocket at any given time. So whether you're in an interview, whether you're at a bar, whether you're at a birthday party, meeting people for the first time, you can have like a short story, a very emotional story, a longer, really funny story. And you can kind of hone and test these stories until they are razor sharp. Any professional comedian, for example, Louis ck, Chris Rock, any of these guys, they practice their jokes over and over and over again. By the time you see them on a stand up special, they are finely honed, perfected jokes. You can do the same thing with your own stories. Okay, so I'll give you an example. I was recently teaching a class and I told a story about how I used to write a comedy column. And I told this story and a few minutes later someone said to me, hey Ramit, you're always talking about testing stuff. Have you ever tested anything on us right now as we've been here for the last couple days? I said, actually, yes. When I was telling that story about writing a comedy column, I was testing it to see if it hit and it totally bombed. No one smiled, no one laughed. It was just dead crickets in the room. And I said, I'll never tell that story again. Let's take a look. I used to write a comedy column in my college newspaper. It was called Two Guys who Were Better Than youn. I actually have a thing for names. It's like very, it's not too modest. Anyway, and the funny thing was we took these photos the first day. They took photos of us and we did these. We did like normal photos and then we did these really weird ones because the photographer, well, they were supposed to be a friend of ours. So we did these really weird photos, like with stuff like that. And they actually accidentally ran the really weird photos. So people were like, seriously, what kind of guys like put these photos in the newspaper? So from then on we just ran with the weird photos. There was a question about whether you test your stories. Yes, yes. Listen, I, who here, you've heard me tell some of the same stories twice. You guys aware that by the time you see Chris rock or Louis CK, they've taken the same joke and tested it 50 different ways? Are you aware of that? Just like that. I test stories. So I have a story that I think is a great story and I'll tell it and I'll know. And I've told stories today and I know and I've told them in slightly different ways than ever before. And I'll Notice where it hits and where it doesn't. For example, did you guys notice that as I told that Stanford Daily Story, I talked about my photographs with my friends, my friend. And did you notice that it didn't really hit? You guys didn't really get it or laugh. At the end where I talked about how they ran the weird photos only being here in the room, could you notice from this perspective that that part of that story did not hit and I will never use it again. So in this case, I realized that the story was so bad that there was no chance of salvaging it at all. Usually if I get like one little laugh, I'm like, alright, this person's got a good sense of humor. But in this case it was just dead. In other cases, I have stories where it's really good, people are engaged and then their eyes start dropping and that means it's a little too long. Okay? So you have to really be socially receptive to look at the person as you're telling the story and kind of gauge where are they interested, where are they not, where are they laughing, where are they not? That is more of an advanced technique that you can use as you tell stories. That's exactly what comedians do, right? They're noticing not only the volume of the crowd, but the tenor of the crowd. Is the person laughing in the middle of the joke? Are they laughing at the end? How long are they laughing, what kind of laugh? That determines whether the joke earns its way into their special. How to make small talk. So I get so many emails from people that say, ramit, I don't want to have to waste time making small talk. I prefer to just get to the point. And I say, you're doomed. Because most of life is about making small talk. It's about building relationships, getting to know each other. It's about neighbors saying, how are the kids? It's not instrumental, it's more symbolic for the most part. And. And if you actually build a great relationship, then you become close and maybe one day you need something from your friend or your friend needs something from you. But you don't build a relationship based on just getting to the facts, okay? That's why I'm telling stories here. That's why my emails are this long. But they're different than top five things you must do today. Because we want stories, we want things that engage us. So I want to show you how to do small talk. That's a big task for small talk. But I want to give you a couple of suggestions and I'M going to show you a video of how to actually do this in small talk. Yes, you do have to play the game and it is a game. You're talking to people, you're building relationships. You can't just go to a restaurant, sit down and immediately have the food brought out to you, Eat it in five seconds and then you leave. No, you have a little dance. The waiter comes, say, how you doing today? Well, can I get you any allergies? Then he comes, he brings the food. How's everything taste? It's a whole process. We may think that we want everything to be direct, but actually we are comforted by having a long set of rituals. Like, how are you? My name's Ramit. What brought you here? That's great. How do you know this person? And on and on and on. It's ritualistic and it exists for a reason. So yes, you have to play the game and yes, the game is more important than you ever thought. The other thing you do in small talk is you take control. Don't wait for the other person to do it. I see this so often. Oftentimes I'm working at a coffee shop and I see two people kind of meeting for the first time. Right? Semi professional context. And one person will just kind of be passive. Like they'll just be sitting there kind of waiting for the other person to take the lead. And the worst is when they're both passive. And I'm like, somebody kill me. Because this is the most awkward conversation I've ever seen in my life. But what you can do is take the active role. That means asking a couple of questions, making a comment, helping the conversation flow in the direction that you want it to flow. That doesn't mean taking total control, but it means if there's an awkward silence, it's awkward because of you, not because of them. I want to show you an example from a little tear down I did with one of my students and show you a short segment about small talk. Take a look. Well, I work on an mmo. If you know World of Warcraft, it's a game just like that. And if you've ever played World of Warcraft, there's a lot of things on the screen that tell you what's going on that you interact with in order to interact with the world. That's what I work on. I help you interact with this rich world. So I'm like, oh, that's pretty cool. How long have you been doing that? About three years. I don't know what you have in There. You can't depend on me to guide the conversation. Yeah, I've been doing it for about three years. The first year or so was mostly a learning experience, but then. I don't care. Nobody cares. Nobody cares about your career at this point. We're in the social world, remember? Right. They're done. We're done with video game stuff. Let's move on. You don't even want to talk about your video game job. Why do you keep talking about it? How do you go from A to B? You said it's weird to put it in the same sentence, so. All right, we're gonna switch roles. Switch roles. Switch roles. I'm you, you're me. So back up and ask me the question. Oh, that sounds pretty interesting. How long you been doing that? Oh, so that's pretty interesting. How long you been doing that? I've been there about three years. Hey, let me ask you a question. You know that guy in the audience who asked that the question about the hot sauce? Do you know what he was talking about? I have no clue. Okay, what just happened there? You. You made the transition? I did it, Sure. I leaned in. Hey, let me ask you a question. Leaned in. I mean, that's just a typical body language thing. I want to just like. It's like we're getting a little intimate. I gotta ask you this question. It's been on my mind, like, oh, I'm like, wondering. Or like, oh, my God, did you see that thing over there? Whatever, whatever. I've given you a bunch of mistakes that we commonly make. I've also given you some techniques for improving your social skills. Again, socially skilled people are not just naturals. They. They actually practice at it for years and years and years. Now, as I told you, I was an awkward weirdo to some extent. I'm still awkward in different ways. But I will tell you that I learned to improve systematically by kind of watching the reactions to the things I said and the way I comported myself. As I was going through my book launch, I asked my publisher if they'd be willing to get me social training. In other words, media training. And they were like, well, why? You've been on tv. We think you're pretty good. And I was like, well, I want to improve my skills. What I really want to say is, because you're going to pay for it. And they did. And I actually learned a ton. They brought me into their studio. They had read my book. They helped me take a message that was this big and compress it down to 10 to 15 seconds. Then we went, they filmed me and we watched it over and over and over again and each time I got better and better. I hated watching myself on camera, but I got so much better by just the end of the day. If you asked me, you know, tell me about I Will Teach youh Be Rich, I could answer that in nine minutes or I could answer it in 20 seconds now. And that's what I learned. And I want to do the same thing for one of you. One of you will be invited to New York. I'll pay for your trip. I'm also going to pay for your media training as well. You're going to learn how to improve your own social skills. You're going to watch yourself on camera. You're going to work with an expert coach. You're going to, you're going to work with the same firm that I worked with to get my training and you're going to learn every little weakness that you have and how to dramatically improve it. This is life changing stuff. Now for one of you, here's how it works. I will select out of the comments left below. I want you to each leave a comment telling me what is your biggest weakness when it comes to social skills. Be specific. Don't just say rambling, say I tend to ramble. For example, here's one thing I did, here were the results of it and here's what I've tried which has or has not worked. Tell me about the challenges that you have when it comes to social skills. I'm afraid to talk to people. I don't know what to say. When I first go up, I get awkward. I'm not sure if I'm underdressed. Tell me the details. I will pick one of you and in a future email I will let you know who won. You'll be flown out to New York. You'll go attend the media training session. You'll become very, very good. Now remember, to be eligible for this, you have to subscribe to my email list. There's a form right below this. Make sure you do it and then leave a comment explaining exactly what your biggest social skills challenge is so that I can choose one of you to fly to New York and get this expert level world class training. Thanks for watching.