Transcripts

Harry Beckwith, co-author of the book You Inc, tells the story of his friend Gary.

He went to a party; he had about an hour conversation with a woman. And a day later he heard back from a mutual friend he emailed him and said, "Gary, so and so met you and she said you're a fascinating conversationalist, she just thoroughly enjoyed it." And Gary said to me, "If we spoke for sixty minutes she spoke for fifty-nine - I just sat there and listened."

Of course in any conversation you can't just listen, you do have to speak.

A really simple thing that you can do is that when someone is speaking to you, count a full second before you respond. Because otherwise the temptation is if you interject something immediately, they'll think you've just been waiting for that moment to jump and you haven't been listening to them. So just that pause is considering them and then moving on with whatever it is that you're going to say.

In any successful relationship, business or personal, Harry says you have to create two feelings in that person.

And the two feelings are a sense of importance and a feeling of comfort. Keep those two things foremost in mind. How do I make this person feel important and how do I make them comfortable?

At somethingyoushouldknow.net, I'm Mike Carruthers and that's Something You Should Know.