How To Have More Engaging Conversations

Three powerful and instantly actionable methods to look and sound more interesting to people.

Are you constantly stuck in awkward silences that just feel too long and boring?

The problem with engaging conversations nowadays is how few and far between they really are. What most chit-chat amounts to in social and professional circles is a masturbatory exchange of talk exclusively concerned with one entity: me, myself, and I.

It isn’t rare to observe a dialogue with one person telling the other all about their day, story, problems, troubles, strife, wife, and so on… only for the other person to oddly ignore any of the substance spoken so that they can reel off a tale about their day, their story, and so on.

Such selfism culminates in phrases like, ‘That happened to me too!’ and any other reply that contains the first-person pronoun.

Here are three fool-proof methods you can use (especially the shyer among you) to make sure you are having a proper, engaging conversation with people.

Ask better, more emotive questions

Asking the right questions, be it small talk or big talk, naturally creates a window for an interesting chat that doesn’t close down suddenly. If you’re honest with yourself, you can more or less predict every question you may encounter on any social occasion. You have your usual stock answers prepared, but the most interesting questions usually throw you off guard a little, but not in a way that you have no idea how to answer.

Open-ended questions about the other person will work to this effect. Instead of asking, ‘Where do you work?’ ask something that contains an emotional word e.g. love:

What do you love about working here?

You will invite people to open up and provide an honest answer about how they feel about their own situation. Getting people to talk frankly about themselves wins you charisma points. More on the science of that here.

Physically demonstrate your interest

Leaning back, hands in the pockets, and wooden facial expressions might make you think you look cool and unphased, but you look uninterested, and that drags any conversation down. People tend to do this in interviews where they try to play it cool, become too agreeable, and talk with a sense of entitlement as opposed to talking with genuine interest.

Whether the other person sitting opposite you is a date or a potential employer, all humans subconsciously pick up on body language cues, if not consciously.

Make sure you sit up straight, lean forward a little, and don’t be afraid to use one of your hands to gently gesticulate your words. See the Italians should you require inspiration.

Adapt your style to theirs

We are mirroring creatures, if you smile you look and feel more approachable with your intentions, it will inspire the same response from the other person, and that filters through to your voice and those better questions.

This might be adapting your pace of speech (faster or slower), the length of your sentences (short or long), or indeed your sense of humour (dry humour or puns, say). One really other good way to mirror someone is to find out what type of ‘communicator’ they are. That is, are they auditory, visual, or emotional thinkers?

If they are a visual thinker and use phrases like, ‘I see what you’re saying, yes…’ then later on you know you can ask questions such as, ‘How does that look to you?’.

The main thing is that you don’t overdo it. You have to be yourself at the end of the day and the best way to approach any conversation for it to be more engaging is to go into it with open and kind intentions. More importantly, to be interested more than being interesting.