92 Little Tricks for Big Success in Relationships (2 page)

Their Bloopers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
296

79 How to Win Their Heart When Their Tongue

Is Faltering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
300

80 How to Let ’Em Know “What’s in It” for Them . . . .
303

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81 How to Make Them
Want
to Do Favors for You . . . .
306

82 How to Ask for Favors (and Get Them!) . . . . . . . . . .
309

83 How to Know What
Not
to Say at Parties . . . . . . . . .
311

84 How to Know What
Not
to Say at Dinner . . . . . . . .
314

85 How to Know What
Not
to Say in a Chance
Meeting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
317

86 How to Prepare Them to Listen to You . . . . . . . . . . .
319

87 How to Turn Their Anger Around (in Three

Sentences or Less) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
322

88 How to Make ’Em Like You (Even When

You’ve Messed Up) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
325

89 How to Trap a Rat with Class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
327

90 How to Get Whatever You Want from Service

Personnel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
330

91 How to Be a Leader in a Crowd, Not a Follower . . . .
333

92 How to Make All the Right Moves . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
336

Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
343

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✰ Introduction

How to Get Anything You Want

from Anybody (Well, at Least

Have the Best Crack at It!)

Have you ever admired those successful people who seem to“have it all”? You see them chatting confidently at business meetings or comfortably at social parties. They’re the ones with the best jobs, the nicest spouses, the finest friends, the biggest bank accounts, or the most fashionable zip codes.

But wait a minute! A lot of them aren’t smarter than you. They’re not more educated than you. They’re not even better looking! So what is it? (Some people suspect they inherited it. Others say they married it or were just plain lucky. Tell them to think again.) What it boils down to is their more skillful way of dealing with fellow human beings. You see, nobody gets to the top alone. Over the years, people who seem to “have it all” have captured the hearts and conquered the minds of hundreds of others who helped boost them, rung by rung, to the top of whatever corporate or social ladder they chose. Wanna-bes wandering around at the foot of the ladder often gaze up and grouse that the big boys and big girls at the top are snobs. When big players don’t give them their friendship, love, or business, they call them “cliquish” or accuse them of belonging to an “old-boy network.” Some grumble they hit their heads against a “glass ceiling.”

The complaining Little Leaguers never realize the rejection was their own fault. They’ll never know they blew the affair, the
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friendship, or the deal because of their own communications fumbles. It’s as though well-liked people have a bag of tricks, a magic, or a Midas touch that turns everything they do into success. What’s in their bag of tricks? You’ll find a lot of things: a substance that solidifies friendships, a wizardry that wins minds, and a magic that makes people fall in love with them. They also possess a quality that makes bosses hire and then promote, a characteristic that keeps clients coming back, and an asset that makes customers buy from them and not the competition. We all have a few of those tricks in our bags, some more than others. Those with a whole lot of them are big winners in life.
How to Talk to Anyone
gives you ninety-two of these little tricks they use every day so you, too, can play the game to perfection and get whatever you want in life.

How the “Little Tricks” Were Unveiled

Many years ago, a drama teacher, exasperated at my bad acting in a college play, shouted, “No! No! Your body is belying your words. Every tiny movement, every body position,” he howled, “divulges your private thoughts. Your face can make seven thousand different expressions, and each exposes precisely who you are and what you are thinking at any particular moment.” Then he said something I’ll never forget: “And your body! The way you move is your autobiography in motion.”

How right he was! On the stage of real life, every physical move you make subliminally tells everyone in eyeshot the story of your life. Dogs hear sounds our ears can’t detect. Bats see shapes in the darkness that elude our eyes. And people make moves that are beneath human consciousness but have tremendous power to attract or repel. Every smile, every frown, every syllable you utter, or every arbitrary choice of word that passes between your lips can draw others toward you or make them want to run away.

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Men—did your gut feeling ever tell you to jump ship on a deal? Women—did your women’s intuition make you accept or reject an offer? On a conscious level, we may not be aware of what the hunch is. But like the ear of the dog or the eye of the bat, the elements that make up subliminal sentiments are very real. Imagine, please, two humans in a complex box wired with circuits to record all the signals flowing between the two. As many as ten thousand units of information flow per second. “Probably the lifetime efforts of roughly half the adult population of the United States would be required to sort the units in one hour’s interaction between two subjects,” a University of Pennsylvania communications authority estimates.1

With the zillions of subtle actions and reactions zapping back and forth between two human beings, can we come up with concrete techniques to make our every communication clear, confident, credible, and charismatic?

Determined to find the answer, I read practically every book written on communications skills, charisma, and chemistry between people. I explored hundreds of studies conducted around the world on what qualities made up leadership and credibility. Intrepid social scientists left no stone unturned in their quest to find the formula. For example, optimistic Chinese researchers, hoping charisma might be in the diet, went so far as to compare the relationship of personality type to the catecholamine level in subjects’ urine.2 Needless to say, their thesis was soon shelved.
Dale Carnegie Was GREAT for the

Twentieth Century, but This Is the

Twenty-First

Most of the studies simply confirmed Dale Carnegie’s 1936 classic,
How to Win Friends and Influence People
.3 His wisdom for the ages said success lay in smiling, showing interest in other people, and Copyright 2003 by Leil Lowndes. Click Here for Terms of Use. 00 (i-xviB) front matter 8/14/03 9:16 AM Page xiv

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making them feel good about themselves. “That’s no surprise,” I thought. It’s as true today as it was more than sixty years ago. So if Dale Carnegie and hundreds of others since offer the same astute advice, why do we need another book telling us how to win friends and influence people? Two mammoth reasons.
Reason One:
Suppose a sage told you, “When in China, speak Chinese,” but gave you no language lessons? Dale Carnegie and many communications experts are like that sage. They tell us what to do but not how to do it. In today’s sophisticated world, it’s not enough to say “smile” or “give sincere compliments.” Cynical businesspeople today see more subtleties in your smile, more complexities in your compliment. Accomplished or attractive people are surrounded by smiling sycophants feigning interest and fawning all over them. Prospects are tired of salespeople who say,

“The suit looks great on you,” when their fingers are caressing cash register keys. Women are wary of suitors who say, “You are beautiful,” when the bedroom door is in view.
Reason Two:
The world is a very different place than it was in 1936, and we need a new formula for success. To find it, I observed the superstars of today. I explored techniques used by top salespeople to close the sale, speakers to convince, clergy to convert, performers to engross, sex symbols to seduce, and athletes to win. I found concrete building blocks to the elusive qualities that lead to their success. Then I broke them down into easily digestible, news-you-can-use techniques. I gave each a name that will quickly come to mind when you find yourself in a communications conundrum. As I developed the techniques, I began sharing them with audiences around the country. Participants in my communications seminars gave me their ideas. My clients, many of them CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, enthusiastically offered their observations. When I was in the presence of the most successful and beloved leaders, I analyzed their body language and their facial 00 (i-xviB) front matter 8/14/03 9:16 AM Page xv

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expressions. I listened carefully to their casual conversations, their timing, and their choice of words. I watched as they dealt with their families, friends, associates, and adversaries. Every time I detected a little nip of magic in their communicating, I asked them to pluck it out with tweezers and expose it to the bright light of consciousness. We analyzed it together, and I then turned it into an easy-to-do “little trick” others could duplicate and profit from.

My findings and the strokes of some of those very effective folks are in this book. Some are subtle. Some are surprising. But all are achievable. When you master them, everyone from new acquaintances to family, friends, and business associates will happily open their hearts, homes, companies, and even wallets to give you whatever they can.

There’s a bonus. As you sail through life with your new communications skills, you’ll look back and see some very happy givers smiling in your wake.

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✰PARTONE

How to Intrigue

Everyone Without

Saying a Word

You Only Have Ten Seconds to

Show You’re a Somebody

The exact moment that two humans lay eyes on each other has awesome potency. The first sight of you is a brilliant holograph. It burns its way into your new acquaintance’s eyes and can stay emblazoned in his or her memory forever.

Artists are sometimes able to capture this quicksilver, fleeting emotional response. My friend Robert Grossman is an accomplished caricature artist who draws regularly for
Forbes
,
Newsweek
,
Sports Illustrated
,
Rolling Stone
, and other popular publications. Bob has a unique gift for capturing not only the physical appearance of his subjects, but for zeroing in on the essence of their personalities. The bodies and souls of hundreds of luminaries radiate from his sketch pad. One glance at his caricatures of famous people and you can actually “see” their personalities.
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How to Talk to Anyone

Sometimes at a party, Bob will do a quick sketch on a cocktail napkin of a guest. Hovering over Bob’s shoulder, the onlookers gasp as they watch their friend’s image and essence materialize before their eyes. When he’s finished drawing, he puts his pen down and hands the napkin to the subject. Often a puzzled look comes over the subject’s face. He or she usually mumbles some politeness like, “Well, er, that’s great. But it really isn’t me.”

The crowd’s convincing crescendo of “Oh yes it is!” drowns the subject out and squelches any lingering doubt. The confused subject is left to stare back at the world’s view of himself or herself in the napkin. Once when I was visiting Bob’s studio, I asked him how he could capture people’s personalities so well. He said, “It’s simple. I just look at them.”

“No,” I asked, “How do you capture their personalities? Don’t you have to do a lot of research about their lifestyle, their history?”

“No, I told you, Leil, I just look at them.”

“Huh?”

He went on to explain, “Almost every facet of people’s personalities is evident from their appearance, their posture, the way they move. For instance . . .” he said, calling me over to a file where he kept his caricatures of political figures.

“See,” Bob said, pointing to angles on various presidential body parts, “here’s the boyishness of Clinton,” showing me his half smile;

“the awkwardness of the elder George Bush,” pointing to his shoulder angle; “the charm of Reagan,” noting the ex-president’s smiling eyes; “the shiftiness of Nixon,” pointing to the furtive tilt of his head. Digging a little deeper into his file, he pulled out Franklin Delano Roosevelt and, pointing to the nose high in the air, “Here’s the pride of FDR.” It’s all in the face and the body.

First impressions are indelible. Why? Because in our fastpaced, information-overload world of multiple stimuli bombarding us every second, people’s heads are spinning. They must form 01 (001-042B) part one 8/14/03 9:16 AM Page 3

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3

quick judgments to make sense of the world and get on with what they have to do. So, whenever people meet you, they take an instant mental snapshot. That image of you becomes the data they deal with for a very long time.

Your Body Shrieks Before Your