Vishen Lakhiani shares three conversation starters backed by research. Ask someone about a passion project, the highlight of their day, or what's exciting coming up. People smile more, lean in, and gesture when you ask these.
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The question is, how do we bring interactivity into our everyday conversations, our video calls, our emails, our chats, our profiles to be more charismatic? Here are the top three conversation starters that got the best ratings across the studies. First, what personal passion project are you working on? So I love this one, and it created the most excitement when people were asked about their hobby. Here's what happened. It was like people came alive. They would look up, they would go, oh, what a great question. They'd get excited, they'd smile, they lean in, they use more hand gestures, just like I'm using right now. Asking about what excited them got them excited. The second two won't surprise you either. So what was the highlight of your day? A small take on how are you? Right. So instead of just how are you? Which is the boring social script, what was the highlight of your day? Ask someone to search for something positive, which in turn made them more positive. And lastly, have anything exciting coming up in your life? Again, asking for excitement triggered excitement.