How to Talk To Anyone Summary | Leil Lowndes

Summary and Analysis of How to Talk to Anyone: 92 Little Tricks for Big Success in Relationships

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Leil Lowndes’ Perspective

Leil Lowndes is an internationally recognized communications expert. She has conducted communication seminars for major US corporations, foreign governments, and the US Peace Corps. Lowndes has appeared on hundreds of television and radio programs. She has authored ten bestselling books on communications. These books have been published in over 26 foreign languages.

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Synopsis

How to Talk to Anyone is a psychology-backed book that offers guidance on effective communication. Lowndes covers a wide range of communication types, broken down into verbal and nonverbal, across almost every possible context. Your approach should adapt depending on who you are talking to and the specific context. So, How to Talk to Anyone offers guidance on how you can become a master communicator. As a master communicator, you can connect with others irrespective of the environment.

StoryShot #1: Using Your Smile and Your Eyes for First Impressions

80% of first impressions is the way you look and move. In fact, studies suggest that emotional reactions occur in our brains before we even have time to register a reaction to somebody. So, try to utilize Leil Lowndes’ tips to intrigue everyone through your first impressions.

Lowndes advises against quick smiles. If you interact with somebody, you should start by looking at their face for a second and pausing. This pause will let you soak in their persona. You should then let out a big warm smile that floods across your face. Allow this flood to overflow into smiling with your eyes. While engaging with the flooding smile, you should also try to maintain eye contact. Others will respect you more if you maintain strong eye contact. Specifically, this ability is associated with intelligence and abstract thinking.

Lowndes’ second technique builds on the importance of maintaining eye contact. She describes how you should adopt sticky eyes. This means you should not break eye contact even after they have finished speaking. Once you have decided to break eye contact, you should do so slowly and reluctantly. Lowndes believes this approach will send a message to others to comprehend their conversation and respect them as an individual.

When you are seeking romance, you should utilize what Lowndes describes as epoxy eyes. If you are romantically interested in someone, maintain deep eye contact with them even when they are not the person talking. If they are interested in you, keeping eye contact while they are a listener can be an effective aphrodisiac.

StoryShot #2: How to Excel at Small Talk

Try not to worry too much about what you are saying, but attempt to match the mood of the audience. The easiest, broader approach to take is simply ensuring your words will put people at ease. Doing this will help make you sound passionate.

As long as your words are putting the audience at ease, you can focus more on the tone of what you are saying. 80% of your communication has nothing to do with your choice of words. 

When introducing people, you should always offer an exciting point for the conversation to flow from. Offering an unbaited hook when starting a conversation will only lead to awkwardness. A word detective can identify their conversation partner’s preferred topic by listening to every word said. You will become more appealing in others’ minds if you learn how to keep the spotlight shining on them.

StoryShot #3: How to Start a Conversation

Lowndes suggests always wearing or carrying something slightly unusual. Possessing these objects will immediately draw other people’s attention towards you. Try to also make small talk by commenting on other people’s attire.

Asking people you know to make introductions with other people can immediately provide an icebreaker.

Eavesdropping in group contexts is not rude. It shows curiosity. So, don’t be scared to eavesdrop on other conversations and say something like ‘excuse me, I couldn’t help but overhear…’

If somebody asks you where you are from, you should always avoid giving them a one-word answer. Use this as an opportunity to describe interesting parts of your life. You should always avoid one-word answers when somebody asks what you do for work. Embellish your answer with fascinating facts about your role, company, or job history.

StoryShot #4: Conversations on Jobs

Lowndes believes you should never be asking the question, “”What do you do?”” You should be asking others how they spend most of their time instead. If you are asked what you do, you should try to avoid using the same stories about your personal life across conversations. Build up a bank of true stories that roll off your tongue.

StoryShot #5: How to Make Others Feel Special

A common mistake is immediately agreeing with another person. Instead of jumping in with “me too,” you should wait and listen. So, the other person will be influenced more if you wait to agree.

Wherever possible, start sentences with the word “you.” Starting conversations with this word will immediately grab your listeners’ attention. If you are meeting a group of people, you should greet each person with a distinct smile rather than smiling at a group.

StoryShot #6: Challenging Conversation Topics

Never, ever, make a joke at anyone else’s expense. You may get some cheap laughs in the short term. But, you will pay for this joke in the long run.

You should always consider the receiver of your news before throwing it out there. Ensure you deliver any news with appropriate emotions.

Whenever someone persists in questioning you on an unwelcome subject, simply repeat your original response. Use precisely the same words in precisely the same tone of voice. Hearing it again usually quiets them down.

StoryShot #7: How to Talk to a Celebrity

When chatting with a celebrity you should never compliment their work and instead, say that you have gained insight from their work. You should also avoid singling out any accomplishments that are well in the past for the celebrity. Choose one of their recent accomplishments to show you are not starstruck.

StoryShot #8: How to Sound Like You Understand Their Passions

Lowndes describes gobbledygook as the language of other professions. Learn a minimal amount of information about a wide range of topics so you can sound like an insider. The most effective way of doing this is finding an insider to teach you some lingo. As well as learning some of the jargon within a profession, you must also identify the hot issues within a field. Every industry has burning concerns that only specialists will know about. Learn these hot issues, and you become infinitely more interesting. Read magazines pertaining to the industry you will be encountering to learn insider news. 

Rating

We rate How to Talk to Anyone 4.3/5.

How to Talk to Anyone PDF, Free Audiobook, Infographic and Animated Book Summary

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Editor’s Note

This article was first published in April 2021. It was updated on 28 March 2022.

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