Whether you're worried about:
- getting through those first few (sometimes awkward) moments in a daygame set
- keeping the conversation running smoothly during a date, or
- you want to be able to easily connect with that interviewer, potential client, boss or other work colleague
There's a couple of simple techniques that natural conversationalists use, and you can learn!
1. Multi-threading
We've all had that awful experience where we're asking simple, rapport seeking questions, getting one-word answers, and having to quickly think up a new question to keep things moving. Or, you do connect on something, maybe even get her laughing, but then once the laughter has died down, you're stuck because you have to find something else to say quickly!
Multi-threading avoids those awkward situations by always making sure there's something to say. Every conversational topic is a thread. The idea is, rather than taking a thread all the way to its conclusion before starting the next one, try to bring new threads out of one first.
For example, let's say you have a funny story about yourself and a friend.
Single / linear threading would be to just tell the story, get the laugh, and then think of something else.
Multi-threading would be as follows: start the story first, but since it's about a friend, start describing them. Then that opens up he possibility of a other story about them that perfectly describes their character. Then you can maybe ask her if she knows anyone like that. That opens up the possibility of a story from her. If not, or if that ends, you go back to your friend, then go back to the story. The story happens in a certain place - has she ever been there? If not, back to the story. After the punch line, has anything like that ever happened to her?
That turns a 2-3 minute anecdote into seeding material for maybe 5-10 minutes of conversation, with lots of possible threads to open, threads out of those, and especially threads of hers.
2. Generalising
This one is huge for learning how to connect with anyone, regardless of if you share their interests or agree with them or not.
A lot of the time, you hope for a moment where you and her discover a shared interest so that the conversation naturally flows from that - often people spend a lot of time trying to discover mutual friends or acquaintances, just so they'll have even the smallest commonality to talk about. But what if there isn't anything immediately coming up? Rather than keeping asking "rapport seeking" questions, try this:
Let's say it comes up that she's an avid stamp collector (unlikely but that's not the point!). Now, I have no interest in this. I could just make fun of her a bit and then move on, but I could actually do better. Instead, I could ask WHY. Asking the reason gets to the motivation behind her passions. She might say because she really likes putting things in order, and is also a bit of a neat freak. Ok, now I can relate at one level of generalisation above the specific activity - I used to DJ and loved collecting old records, and I was particularly anal about organising my music. Now we've connected on the "bit of a nerd / organising" level, and I've told her a bit about myself which can lead to discussion about music, other nerdy things, etc.
So, next time you're stretching to relate to someone, figure out their base motivations, and it's more likely you'll be able to connect at the general level, before discussing the specifics, which can lead to further discussions which you can then even multi-thread!
