today I wanna talk about social skills, and
how I used to be a freak of nature; 127 pounds I as I like to tell people I
had the dimensions of a supermodel - a female
supermodel. And I wanna talk to you about how important social skills are. I'm not saying I'm the best at social
skills [laughs]; that's not the case at all. I'm told that I don't smile
enough, that I'm not vulnerable enough, that I'm cold
sometimes are many things people say and those are the nice things by the way. But I learned over time how to talk to
people in different situations, for example: I used to not know how to talk to women. I
I would come across, like, I might be able to get people to laugh, but I was almost
like a clown. and I didn't know how to be masculine, I
wasn't sure how to be a man. Same thing was true up talking of
talking to people at cocktail parties or random events. I would go up to them I
would shake their hand, I knew that much, and then I wouldn't know how to carry
the conversation - how do you make it interesting? how do you present yourself as someone
memorable? how do you actually learn about someone beneath the surface of "oh who are you
and what brought you here" and things like that? so what I want to do is show you how I
went from that, to some of the things I do now. Now I'll
routinely speak in front of a hundred or even thousands of people.
I'll appear on national TV. I'll do things in one take, which I love
doing. I don't waste my time when I get in front of the camera - 'be done'. so what I want to is show you
an example of me appearing on a national TV show,
and analyze what's going on in terms of social
skills. here take a look: Most of the work is done before you
ever walk in that room: making sure that you're a top performer,
asking your boss what it would take to get a compensation adjustment, and
actually exceeding those goals. and letting your boss know... [back to current Ramit] now what I
just did there wasn't very obvious, but I did it for a reason. When I
held up my fingers and said and basically did 123, I did that because anchors are very quick to start speaking
again. This segment is very very short and they want to get right back to the
message so when I'm still doing one two and three with my fingers, I'm suddenly signaling her but I'm still
going with my points and you notice that at the end, I lowered my
voice to let her know I was done making my point and just like
I'm about to lower my voice now, you'll know when I'm done speaking
"Say you, you should go in there knowing
that even in this economy there's still a shot for you to have a
race." [Ramit]: absolutely people don't believe it, the first thing he say is 'well maybe that works for that guy or
that woman'.. [current Ramit]: what I did there was, I realized I jumped the gun. I started
off speaking very, very quickly, so instead of speaking very quick like this
I slowed it down. I made an expansive gesture and slowed
down my speaking. sometimes in the middle of a sentence
you realize you are speaking very quickly and then you can actually slow it down
and get more in control of your voice. What may seem really
slow to you, actually seems highly credible to
other people. [back to video]: 'but not for me', [reporter]: I know! you worry they're gonna
go in and upset your boss, like he is gonna say how can you talk about that in this economy you expect
to get more money' [Ramit]: 'yes, because most people
believe they walk in and say 'I want more money', and the boss says 'no', and they walk out
embarrassed. That's not the worst- [current Ramit]: what I'm doing here is being very expressive. now, not my face you know I have- I've-
one of my new year's resolutions one year was actually to smile more. But here I am
using a lot of really high pitched tone, like 'yeah, give me money' and i'm saying no it
doesn't work. and it's good because it mixes things up.
One of the biggest challenges I see people having is they remain in
the same flat monotone speaking, like this about the most
exciting thing that ever happened to them, like the birth of their daughter they still speak like this. it's just not
emotionally engaging and so to be able to get expressive with
your face, your smile, even your intonation can be
extremely powerful in getting people to pay attention to
you. now I used to go into meetings when I was younger and, like, I'd be meeting
a CEO or something, and they would say "what do you think
we should do with this?" what do you think about that and I would
start jumping into the tactics: "well, I looked at your website and I really think
you should change your check boxes to radio buttons.." and they would be like "who the hell is this guy he's
speaking at this level I'm speaking at this level".. I didn't understand how to calibrate
myself. so when I'm going to these meetings I would say something, and I would actually see people's eyes
rolling or people start going like this, I mean people would actually look at
their watch and go "oh God is this guy going to start talking again?" and it really irritated me, because I
knew I was doing something wrong. I didn't know what, and I would watch
other people and they would start speaking And it would sound crisp, and they would use
intonation, and I was sitting here speaking in a
really bored way but I thought I was really interesting. and then I can tell I was not because
people would be looking at their watch.. not a good place to be. so along the way I learned a lot of
little social cues, social triggers and different things I
could do to improve my social skills. I want to share a few of them with you
today. now some of these might seem a little bit basic, like what do you do when you walk up to
someone at a cocktail party? what do you say to them? but i wanna walk you through this
process and I'm confident even one of these, just one could dramatically change the
way you interact people. and in my experience more and more
experienced you get, your technical skills matter, but your social skills matter at an
increasing rate. That's why I'm spending this time today here in the studio talking about some insights I learned in
terms of social skills, and let's see what you can apply to your
life starting today. okay so I went out to a lot of different
I will teach readers I said: what are the challenges you have when it
comes to social skills? one of the biggest was "what do I do when I see someone at a
party and I just wanna talk to them? I'm not talking about using game and
going up and negging them, I'm not talking about that. maybe another time. today I'm
just talking about what do you say at a professional event that can actually get a discussion started.
Here's 3 lines that you can use. very simple stuff, but stuff that people
don't often use. so one thing you can do just go up and say
"hi nice to meet you, I'm Ramit, what brought you here?" simple very simple. what brought you here. then
they're gonna say "I came here because I know the.. the founder of this thing.." "oh that's
interesting how do you guys know each other?" ask another question and now you've got
a conversation started. second thing you say - very simple:"hi I'm Ramit"
"hi I'm Mike" boom - off to the races. typically in
events that you go to where you're going to introduce someone, they're there to meet people as well. In
fact, to reframe your mental game you can say, 'look I'm
actually doing them a favor by talking to them'
why? because no one wants to be the person standing at a party alone. so
by going up to them, yeah it's anxiety producing, and you feel kind of
wierd, but trust me they actually feel amazing you
came up to them. and here's how you know: imagine yourself
at a party, you're up there you just got yourself a
drink you can like looking around you're about to pull your phone out so you look busy, and somebody comes up
to you and says hey my name's John. awesome, you feel great. someone picked you at this crowd to come
up and talk to you- you're going to be grateful, not weirded out. OK? that's how we start
changing the way we think, as well as changing our
behavior. another way you can break the ice is to simply go to
someone and say 'so how do you know John?" John being the name of the organizer, maybe the birthday
host. so I'll give an example. I was at a birthday
party the other day, it was a birthday party for, it was a co-
birthday party thrown by four different people at a bar, and you know
I came out to my friend is it how's it going happy birthday. and then I was mingling, so I didn't
monopolize my friends time and what do I do? so after I said hello
you know we can hang out a little bit I mingled around and I went up to people
I said oh so how do you know Michelle and that was a
great conversation starter because of course, everyone's there, they're are supporting
your friends and we got some great discussions, right? someone has this great startup,
someone's doing this, someone was making fun of another person's
shoes it was great. that is how you can break the ice and get that conversation started. the next thing that I will teach readers
told me was, 'how do I keep a conversation going?'. so
it's one thing to got someone say you know what brought you here or how do
you know the host, but it's another too kind of ask that question and then get stuck. so
what do you do to keep the conversation going? and going in an interesting direction? Let me give you a few suggestions. my biggest mistake early on was asking too many questions. okay so I'd be like
oh so what brought you here? oh really? you know him? do you know that? what do you do? bla bla bla and get a little bit weirded out like is
this dude interrogating me so what I would do is instead of simply
asking question after question after question ask a couple questions and then I might
make a statement reflecting on what they said. I might say "that's really interesting you know I
wouldn't have thought that would be natural to go from X to Y but the way you say it it makes a lot of
sense" and of course they're like off to the races with that right? so one
thing I learned was not as too many questions typically- I know this from eavesdropping
on hundreds have dates that happen next to me in the places
that i write, coffee shops and things like that- every time a date sits next to me I
immediately go to my computer, put my headphones on
you and then listen for the next hour- it's what
I do. and so I've been able to draw several conclusions from this the number
one is guys talk about themselves way too much. so my problem was asking too many
questions, oftentimes you have guys, especially when they're talking to women, they'll just talk too much blah bahbah
bahbah not actually asking anything about that person. they walk away, and if you were to say like
what do you know about that person, they'd be like ah I dono they seem really nice, they
laughed at my jokes so you want to be very careful about
calibrating yourself. asking too many questions or not asking
enough questions at all ok? here are a few ways you can keep this
conversation going. so one thing you can say is so what brought you to this event? and
as they tell you that, 'oh you know I'm here because my company
sponsored it and blah blah blah' then you follow up on the next natural
question which is oh what do you do? now that's a little
bit of a cliche question, but it's an easy one that you can pull
out if you need to and you're stuck. what do you do gives
you an opportunity to kinda practice your different answers too. so for example if I say what do you do
and someone says 'oh I'm a strategic operational consultant' I
may be like okay that sounds really impressive I'm just
not sure I understand what it means. or I can say oh wow so do you work with
all industries or do you work with all industries or just this technology industry?
see how I took two totally different approaches? if I'm costly talking to different
people I can actually test which one works better just by watching the reaction. one is
kinda fun lighthearted one one is a more curious serious one
probably if we're at an event I actually but you
that the first one goal for better if you've calibrate your body language one thing you can say is you know what
was your biggest takeaway today? what was your biggest insight today? I
would again test those two words you can get very different responses from just testing those. One thing you can
do that works really well, is after listening to people-
really understanding who they are- you might
ask and what do you do? or are you here from outta town or are you
local? oh I'm here from outta town or from Houston "oh Houston I love to bbq
there!" so one thing you can do is also make a
coment on them. you can say something like 'you know
you seem pretty adventurous you know I know a
couple of other management consultants but I don't know anybody who does scuba
diving on their off time it seems pretty
ventures' obviously you're complimenting them but you're
doing it in an authentic way- why? because you point out 'look I've listened
to you, I know other people like you and you seem XYZ'. now you're not doing
this to be a kiss ass. if you do this and you're not authentic,
people will recognize it from a mile away. what you're doing though is truly listening
to them and then making a comment a little bit about who they are. now obviously
you know something nice to say, don't say it at all. I learned that lesson myself as wel.l but
what you can do is show that you've been listening, it actually honors someone when you make a comment
obviously complimentary comment, 'so you know i've really listen to who
you are and it seems to me that XYZ' that's really the message you're sending.
they love to have their thoughts acknowledged. they love to be the center of attention, more importantly
they love that someone would take the time to actually think deeply about them and
make a very informed positive comment. like if someone came to
me and he said you know Ramit you seem, you seem a lot more
thoughtful than I thought you know like on your website you can make his
bombastic claims, you've got the I will teach you be rich name, but meeting you, you really seems like you
spend a lot of time studying the psychology, the deep theory
of the stuff you're talking about. I'll be over the moon. I'll be so happy
for the next month just thinking back to what that person
said. of course because its positive, it shows me that they've
really understood who I am, and what would happen? I would like that
person. so we're not tricking anybody here- if they
said something like Ramit, you really seem like amazing. like you seem like just
awesome, like everything you do is just so successful, just incredible. I wanna I don't know how you do but I
just wanna know everything. I'd be like aah your like kinda creeping me out. but if someone is actually thoughtful and
listens that can really change the tenor of that
conversation oooo-k: how do you get yourself out up a
conversation whether it's fortunate or unfortunate I
have developed a nac for extricating myself from super
awkward conversations possibly because they happen to me so
much. possibly because some other people watching this corner
me, and then I have these really weird conversations where I have to figure how to
get myself out. so I've tested many many many ways and
I'm pleased to deliver what I've learned along the
way. so let's say you're in a conversation, one of
two things can happen that make you wanna leave: 1) it's just the natural end of a
conversation right you can have said hello you got to know each other,
great. the second thing is you've kinda encountered a weirdo who's
just like, you know, they're just a little bit off or their coming along pretty strong basically
every woman watching this is like yep that's been happening since I was 13. so you know it. but guys we don't really
have that experience up having to extricate ourselves as much. so there are classic ways to get yourself out o
these things. it's very simple. if you see that the
conversations kinda dying down to a natural level, or you're just ready to leave, you don't
have to make it awkward. you don't, not at all. classic way to do it
is simply. you say well it was a pleasure meeting you, thanks for
chatting. that's it but notice that in my intonation, even in
my body language, I'm signifying every possible way it's
time for me to go. if you don't do this, oftentimes, and this has
happened to me many times, you get stuck talking to the same person
for like 40 minutes, and you're like why am i here talking this
person? I wanna like mingle, I wanna go get another drink, i jus wanna
do something other than getting stuck. but you know something we're afraid of
confrontation. I know I have been afraid of confrontation the past. so you can use this line of "you know, it
was a pleasure meeting you, thanks so much for chatting" and you're
on your way. now I will tell you that in a couple situations I've had someone
who wasn't very socially receptive and they just didn't get the message. so
like okay sounds good I'll come with you and I'm
like nah nah. so I, this actually just happened about a
month ago. I was at a bar meeeting some people, somebody
introduce me to somebody else, and I'm chatting with this guy, he's of
monopolizing my tim,e and I was tryna make my way out of it, but he's one of
those guys that he would start a sentence any be life and then he would have
another clause and another clause in other sentence and
then he tell a story, and I'm kinda like this; I'm sitting here like ' please
kill me right now'.. so- I tried my line, and he actually, like, he wouldn't let me go he's like
'oh yeah yeah yeah, but one thing: when I was a young lad in a blah blah
blah' so actually, I finally had to be very, very, very direct with him. I said "you know
what I really appreciated talking you, but I've
got friends here from outta town, and I've gotta go talk to them now.
thanks." and he was like "oh", he finally realized that he had been
kinda monopolizing my time. almost by definition he hadn't realize that.
so that is kind of an escalation script you
can use if someone's really not getting the message, but in general, ninety-nine percent of
the time you can simply say "you know what, it's been a pleasure thanks for chatting" and you're good to
go. one thing you can do to be extremely
memorable is to tell stories. now in my dream job
course I talk about having a story toolbox. this is basically having a few stories ready, you can just pull out of your pocket at any given time. so whether you're in an interview,
whether you're at a bar, whether you're at a birthday party meeting people for the
first time, you can have like a short story, a very emotional story, a longer really
funny story, and you can kind of hone and test the
stories until they are razor sharp. any professional comedian, for example
Louis CK, Chris Rock, any these guys- they practice
their jokes over and over and over again. by
the time you see them on a stand-up special they are finely honed perfected jokes. you can do the same thing with your own
stories, okay? so I'll give you an example: I was recently
teaching a class and I told a story about how I used to write
a comedy column, and I told this story, and a few minutes later someone said to me
hey Ramit, you always talk about testing stuff, have you ever tested
anything on us right now as we've been here for the last couple days? I said actually yes, when I was telling a
story about writing a comedy column, I was testing to see if it hit- and it
totally BOMBED no one smiled, no one laughed it was just
dead crickets in the room. and I said I'll never tell that story again let's take a look is when I, i used to write a comedy column for my
college newspaper, it was called two guys who are better
than you [laughter]. I actually have a thing for names like-
it's very, it's not too modest. anyway um- and the
funny thing was we took, we took these photos the first day, they took
photos of us, and we did these really, we did like normal photos, and then we did these really weird
ones cuz the photographer, well they were supposed to be a friend of
ours, so we did these really weird photos like [interpretive weirdness] I stuff like that. and they actually
accidentally ran the really weird photos. so people were like, seriously what kinda guys like, put these photos in the newspaper.
so from then on we just ran with the weird photos.. there was a question about whether you
test your stories yes oh yes listen I, who hear, you've heard me tell some of the same
stories twice, you guys are aware that by the time you see Chris
Rock or Louie CK, they've taken the same joke and tested it
fifty different ways. are you aware of that? just like that i test
stories so I I have a story that i think is a
great story and I'll tell it and i'll know, and I've told stories today
and I know, and I've told them into slightly different ways than ever before. and I'll notice where it hits and where it
doesn't. for example did you guys noticed that as I told that
Stanford daily story I talked about my photographs with my friends? my friend? and did you notice that it didn't really
hit? you guys didn't really get it, or laugh at the end, where I
talked about how they ran the weird photos. only being here in the room could you
notice from this perspective at that part that that
story did not hit - and I'll never use it again.. so in this case I realized that the story
was so bad that there was no chance of salvaging it at all.
usually if I get like one laugh, I think alright this person's got a good sense of humor.
but in this case it was just dead. in other cases I have stories where it's really good people are engaged, and then
their eyes start dropping and that means it's a little too long,
okay? so you have to really be socially receptive
to look at the person as you're telling the story and kinda gauge where they are interested,
where they are not, where are they laughing, where are they not. that is more of an
advanced technique that you can use as you tell stories, that's exactly what comedians do,
right? they're noticing not only the volume of the crowd, but the tenor of the crowd.
is the person laughing in the middle a joke? are you laughing at the end? how long are
they laughing? what kind of laugh? THAT, determines whether the joke earns
its way into their special. how to make small talk so I get so many emails from people that
say 'Ramit, I don't want to habe to waste time making small talk. I prefer to just get to the point' and I
say "you're doomed" because most of life is about making
small talk. it's about building relationships, getting to know each other it's about
neighbor saying 'how are the kids?' it's not instrumental, it's more symbolic
for the most part. and if you actually built a great relationship, then you become close and maybe one day you need something from your friend your
friend need something from you. but you don't build a relationship based on just getting to the facts. Okay? that's
why I'm telling stories here. that's why my emails are this long, but
they're different than "top five things you must do today",
because we want stories you want things that engage us. so I wanna show you how to do small talk.
that's it that's a big task for small talk, but i
wanna give you a couple of suggestions and I want to show you a video, on how to actually do this. in small talk, yes
you do have to play the game and it is a game. you're talking to people,
you're building relationships, you can't just go to a restaurant, sit down, and
immediately have the food brought to you in five seconds and you leave now you have a little dance the waiter
comes to how you doing today what can I get you any allergies any
company brings a food how's everything taste it's a whole process. we may think that we want everything to be
direct, but actually we are comforted by having a long set
rituals. like 'how are you', 'my name's Ramit', 'what
brought you here?' that's great how do you know this person
on it's a ritualistic and it exists for a reason. so yes, you
have to play the game. and yes the game is more important than
you ever thought. the other thing you do in small talk is: you take control don't wait for the other person to do it. I see this so often,
oftentimes I'm working at a coffee shop and I see two
people kinda meeting for the first time, right? semi-professional context, and one person will just kind of be passive,
like they'll just be sitting there, kind of waiting for the other person
take the lead, and the worst is when they're both passive and I'm like, "somebody kill me, cuz this
is the most awkward conversation I've ever seen in my life." but what you can do, is take the active
role that means asking a couple questions, making a comment
helping the conversation flow in the direction you want to flow right? that doesn't mean
taking total control, but it means if there's an awkward
silence it's awkward because of you, not because of them. I want to show you an example,
from a little tear down I did with my students, and show you a short segment about small
talk. take a look: Uh well, I work on an MMO. if you know
World of Warcraft, it's a game just like that. and if you've
ever played World of Warcraft, there's a lot of things on the screen that tell you
what's going onand that you interact with in order to interact with the world- that's what I work on. i help you
interact with this rich world. Ramit: so I'm like oh that's pretty cool uh how long you been doing that? Guy: about three years. uhm.. Ramit: you can't depend on me to guide the
conversation. Guy: yeah.. uhm.. for about three years uuh the first year or so was mostly a
learning experience but then.. Ramit: I don't care. nobody cares. nobody cares about your
career at this point. we're in the social world, remember? right. they're done. we're done with video
game stuff, let's move on- you don't even want to talk about your video game stuff!
Why do you keep talking about it!? Guy: so how do you go from A to B? you said it's weird to
put it in the same sentence- Ramit: alright we're going to switch roles, so I'm you you're me. so back up and ask me the
question "Oh that sounds pretty interesting how
long you been doing that?" [repeats] [repeats] I've been there
about three years, hey, let me ask you a question- you know
that guy in the audience who asked that, the question about the hot sauce? do you
know what he was talking about? no clue. okay what just happened there? you made the transition. Ramit: I did it. Guy:sure. Ramit: I leaned in, 'hey let me ask you a question' leaned in, I mean that's just typical body language thing,
I want to just like it's like we're getting a little, 'I gotta ask you this question that's been on my
mind like oh I'm like wondering, or like, 'oh my god did you see that thing over there?'
whatever- whatever! I've given you a bunch of mistakes that
we commonly make, I've also given you some techniques for improving your social skills. again
socially skilled people are not just Naturals. they actually practice at it for years and
years and years. now as I told you, I was an awkward weirdo. ah, to some extent I'm still awkward in
different ways. but I will tell you that I learned to
improve systematically by kinda watching the reactions to the things I said and the way I
comported myself. as I was going through my book launch, I
asked my publisher if they'd be willing to get me social training - in other words media
training and they were like 'why? we you've
been on TV we think you're pretty good" and I was like 'well I want to improve my skills' what I
really wanted to say is 'cuz you're gonna pay for it' and they did and i actually learned a ton. they brought me into their studio, they
had read my book, they helped me take a message that was this big and
compress it down to ten to fifteen seconds. then we went, they filmed me, and we
watched it over and over and over again. each time I
got better and better. I hated watching myself on camera, but I
got so much better by just the end of the day. if you asked me,
you know tell me about I will teach you rich - I
could answer in nine minutes, or i could answer in 20 seconds, and that's
what I learned. and I want to do the same thing for one of you. One of you will be
invited to New York I'll pay for your trip, I'm also gonna
pay for your media training as well. you're gonna learn how to improve your
own social skills. you are going to watch yourself on camera, you
get to work with an expert coach, you are going to work with the same firm that I worked
with, to get my training and you're gonna learn every little
weakness that you have and how to dramatically improve it. this is life changing stuff. now for one of
you - here's how it works: I will select out of the comments left below I want you to each leave a comment telling me
what is your biggest weakness when it comes to social skills -
be specific. don't just say 'rambling' - say I tend to
ramble for example here's one thing I did, here
were the results of it, and here's one thing I've tried which has or
has not worked. ok, tell me about the challenges that you
have when it comes to social skills. I'm afraid to talk to people I don't
know what to say when I first go up, I get awkward, I'm not sure if I'm under dressed - tell me
the details - I will pick one of you and in a future email I will let you know
who won you'll be flown out to New York, you'll go attend the media training session,
you'll become very very good. now remember to be
eligible for this you have to subscribe to my email list there's a form right below this make sure you do it, and
then leave a comment explaining exactly what your biggest
social skills challenge is, so that I can choose one of you to fly in
New York and get this expert level world-class training. thanks for watching.
Now that only needs to be true. Am I doing my friends a favor woth a conversation? Maybe, depends on what we talk about. How about strangers? Not really.