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Technique #37
Never the Naked Thank You
Never let the phrase “thank you” stand alone. From A
to Z, always follow it with for: from “Thank you for
asking” to “Thank you for zipping me up.”
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PART FOUR
How to Be an Insider
in Any Crowd
What Are They All Talking About?
Has it ever happened to you? Everyone at the party is speaking
gobbledygook. They’re all discussing faulty audits, code con-
straints, or the library market—and you have no idea what they’re
talking about. It’s because everybody at the party is an accoun-
tant, an architect, or a publisher—and you’re not.
So you stand there with a pasty smile on your face, not open-
ing your mouth. If you do, you fear the wrong thing will come
out. Paranoia sets in. Everybody will snicker at you. You’re an out-
sider. So you suffer in silence.
In high school I suffered a massive case of Silent Outsider
Syndrome, especially around males. All they wanted to talk about
was cars. I knew nothing about cars. The only time I’d ever set
foot in a “body shop” was to get a suntan.
Well, one fateful day, Mama came home with a gift for me
that transformed my teenage existence from shy to sociable. It was
a book on all the current model cars and their differences over and
under the hood. One reading, and I became fluent in Fords,
Chevys, and Buicks. I no longer hyperventilated when boys said
words like
carburetor
,
alternator
,
camshaft
, or
exhaust manifold
. I
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Copyright 2003 by Leil Lowndes. Click Here for Terms of Use.
didn’t need to learn a lot, just enough to ask the right questions to
get the guys talking. When I’d learned to speak “car” with the
boys, it worked wonders for my social life.
Cut to today. We grown-up boys and girls also have our
favorite topics that usually involve our work or our hobbies. When
we’re with people in our own field or who share our interests, we
open up like small-town gossips. (Even engineers who have a con-
stant case of cat-got-their-tongue start gabbing about greasy tur-
bines and various projects when they’re together.) To outsiders, our
conversation sounds like gobbledygook. But we know precisely
what it’s about. It’s our own jobbeldygook or hobbydygook.
You fear you’ll find yourself in a party of squash players when
you’re the type of person who’d rather be in court than on court?
Don’t panic hearing words like
lobbing
and
hittingrails
roll off the
squash players’ tongues. So what if the only experience you’ve ever
had with squash was the mashed acorn variety on your plate next
to the turkey last Thanksgiving. All you need is the few techniques
that follow.
Just as anglers throw out a dragonfly to get the fish to bite, all
you have to do is throw out the right questions to get people to
open up. Dale Carnegie’s adage, “show sincere interest and people
will talk,” only goes so far. As they say in poker, “it takes jacks or
better to open.” And in conversation, it takes cursory knowledge
or better about their field to get them to really open up. You must
have knowledgeable curiosity, the kind that makes you sound like
you’re worth talking to.
In this section, we explore techniques that are “Open Sesames”
to get people gabbing with you like an insider.
144
How to Talk to Anyone
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Whenever friends visit my hometown, New York City, I warn
them “Never ask anyone riding in the subway for directions.”
“Because I’ll get mugged?” they fearfully ask.
“No, just because you’ll never get where you’re going!” Most
Big Apple subway riders know only two things about the subway:
where they get on and where they get off. They know nothing about
the rest of the system. Most people are like NYC strap-hangers
when it comes to their hobbies and interests. They know their own
pastimes, but all the others are like unvisited stations.
My unmarried (and wishing she weren’t) friend Rita has a bad
case of bowler’s thumb. Every Wednesday night she’s bowling up
a storm with her friends. She is forever discussing her scores, her
averages, and her high game. Another single and searching friend
Walter is into white-water rafting. He talks endlessly with his pad-
dling friends about which rivers he’s run, which outfitters he’s gone
with, and which class rapids he prefers. Thinking my two single
friends might hit it off, I introduced Walter the paddler to Rita
the bowler and mentioned their respective passions.
“Oh you’re a bowler!” said Walter.
“Yes,” Rita smiled demurely, awaiting more questions about
her big bowling turn-on. Walter was silent.
145
How to Be a Modern-
Day Renaissance Man
or Woman
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38
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Copyright 2003 by Leil Lowndes. Click Here for Terms of Use.
Masking her disappointment, Rita said, “Uh, Leil tells me
you’re into water rafting.” Walter smiled proudly, awaiting further
friendly interrogation on paddling. “Uh, that must be exciting.
Isn’t it dangerous?” was the best Rita could do.
“No, it’s not dangerous,” Walter patronizingly responded to
her typical outsider’s question. Then the conversation died.
During the deafening silence, I remember thinking, if Rita
had run just one river, if Walter had bowled just one game, their
lives might be different now. Conversation could have flowed, and
who knows what else might have flowered.
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