People love talking about themselves. You can increase your social skills by training yourself to be interested in other people.
Most people primarily talk about themselves and their own interests. This self-focus is counter-productive, hindering connections. Unfortunately, it’s the default approach for most people.
I used to be bad at listening to others. I only connected with people who were similar enough to enjoy talking about my interests.
Recently, a friend taught me how to enjoy focusing on others. He has a way to make other people more interesting. In this post, I’ll share my friend’s advice.
But first, let’s talk about the benefits of being interested in others.
Benefits of Being Interested in Others
Practically, when interested in others, you focus conversations on the person you’re talking with. This has many benefits:
The other person gets super-engaged in the conversation
You get a lot of information, helping you decide if you want to get to know them better
It’s easy once you get going. Just ask about things that spark your curiosity
You will learn new things, and get to know new people
This is the oldest trick in The Book, captured beautifully in this quote:
“You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.”
― Dale Carnegie (How to Win Friends and Influence People)
The Challenge
If you’re like most people, you face one major issue when trying to focus on others:
Your favourite topic is yourself and your interests.
Unless you make an effort, your self-interest will override your intention to listen. You can’t simply “decide to be interested” when you’d rather talk about yourself.
I have a friend who’s great at being interested in others. When he talks to a person, he shines with interest and enthusiasm. People are pulled towards him as if he is magnetic, and his interactions all seem meaningful and rewarding.
Naturally, I decided to interview him about his approach to listening to people.
His advice was simple:
Try to deeply understand the person you’re talking to.
Making Other People Interesting
When I asked my friend what “deeply understanding others” meant, he told me that it was all about having an accurate idea of how the other person functions. If you have an accurate idea of someone’s functioning, you’re able to predict their reactions, opinions, actions and thoughts.
You’re also able to understand how to talk to them, presenting ideas, suggestions and thoughts in a way they understand. You should be able to guess what issues they have been working on, how they relate to themselves, and how they motivate themselves to do things.
How do you figure this out? By being curious, making guesses, and asking questions.
Examples
One of my favourite questions is “What’s important to you?”. Asking such a direct question requires a lot of care, but if it lands properly, it’s very potent. People’s answers to this question usually say a lot about them.
If someone says “The most important thing is to be kind to myself”, they likely have a history of shame and self-judgement. If they had been kind since forever, it wouldn’t stand out as their first response to my question. “I want to be kind to myself” is a reminder targeted at changing behaviour. I usually follow up with something like “Are you getting better at being kind towards yourself?”
If someone says “My friends are the most important thing in my life”, I try to understand what kinds of friendships they value. Are their friends related to roots/history, pleasure, prestige, virtue (mutual empowerment), emotional support, or something else? I usually follow up by asking something like: “What about your friends is important to you?”
Besides these examples, I want to share a question I asked this weekend. I was talking to a woman who is afraid of heights. She’s also doing “highlining”, an activity where you walk across a floppy strap high up in the air. She told me that she’s way less afraid of heights after having practised highlining for some time. I thought to myself: “Maybe she’s into amateur exposure therapy, just like me?”, and asked her: “Did you get into highlining because you wanted to stop fearing heights?”.1
Takeaway and Benefits
Figuring people out is a fun way to get to know them. Instead of passively receiving stories they want to share, you become an active investigator. As you enter a conversation, you start forming an idea of the person you’re talking to. The next step is to check if your ideas are correct, asking questions to verify your assumptions.
Each answer improves your model of the other person. Every time you make an assumption and ask a question, your understanding of the other person increases. After the conversation, you are left with a deeper understanding of the other person.
Remembering one thing about them will help you remember everything else — it all fits together! I generally struggle to remember people, but the ones I’ve tried to understand deeply stick with me.
Trying to understand others deeply makes conversation more fun, and has made it far easier for me to connect to people. I’m forever thankful to my friend for teaching me his ways. I hope that this approach to relating will give you a lot of joy in your life.
May I also recommend a certain famous paper by Aron et al. (1998)? The authors came up with a questionnaire specifically for ‘the experimental generation of interpersonal closeness’. So, a bunch of questions which make for lively, interesting conversation, while allowing you to learn about the other person—though I’m sure the way the press referred to it as ‘questions that lead to love’ was more than a little overblown.