Ep03: The Phases of Conversation

Conversation is not a talent, it is a skill; let's deconstruct the phases of conversation.

On this episode, Mike walks us through the phases of conversation.

---Transcript---

(Intro)
This is the conversation Iq podcast. I'm your host Mike Ford. Are you sick and tired of dealing with social anxiety? Do you want to overcome your fear of feeling awkward or looking silly in social situations? Do you struggle with just saying hello or maybe keeping a conversation going? Well, welcome to our community of communicators where we are on a mission to rid the world of loneliness by sharing tips, tricks, and techniques from some of the world's best conversationalist. Super excited to have you guys on this journey with us. We'll see you on the other side of this episode.

(Episode)
All right. Welcome back to another episode of conversation Iq. Last episode we talked about just the value of talking to strangers, being able to have core values already outlined and allowed us to move our relationships or people that were meeting through a filter so that we know that the person that we are engaging with every other going to fall in line with what we truly believe in, what we desire, right? Again, it's still important that we figure that stuff out ahead of time because you just start developing relationships because of the environment that you're in. School, work, church and those type of things, which there's nothing wrong with that. It's just that sometimes those relationships, they're not presenting challenges allowing you to grow truly. And I love saying the richness and just the fullness that life has to offer. So the last episode, if you guys hadn't heard it, go back and check that one out.

But let's go ahead and get into things. Uh, this time around. So what we want to focus on today a is how do we actually now start to talk about the actual conversation itself. Interesting. Going through the process of developing my conversation skills, I've learned that conversation can actually be broken down into phases or segments. In fact, they usually goes through a phase and a, these are the phases of conversation. The first phase of the conversation is breaking ice or you know, creating an interruption, right? But you're, you're, you're breaking the ice, starting the conversation. The next piece after that is taking that conversation from the normal kind of topical level. Once you get past breaking the ice and deepening the conversation. So That's phase two is deepening the conversation. Phase three is where you're really starting to connect with the other person, so you're finding commonalities, you're finding common ground and you are now starting to relate, right?

The relating part is the beginning of a relationship and it starts to happen during that third phase of conversation. After that third phase of conversation, the fourth phase, a conversation is really being able to add value or move into what we call a cocreate phase. So in a book called Super Connector, the authors of the book talk about connecting has gone from this world where it used to be, right? It used to be like this really great thing for our network and we're meeting folks were developing relationships we can leverage and that's the problem is that we approach relationships that way. Instead of thinking how you can leverage a relationship to get something out of it is to start approaching relationships as how can I step into a relationship with someone and help them achieve something? How can I help them achieve, get to their ambition, get to their goal and help them achieve something that they've never imagined would be possible, right?

That's called cocreating with somebody. And so that process happens after we've made a connection, right? The third phase, which is making a connection and identifying someone's wishes like their dreams and that type of stuff. And being able to develop enough of a trust and a relationship during that third phase that when you get to the cocreating phase, that people trust you enough to dead start telling you about their dreams, their ambitions, um, and that you take a genuine interest in learning that stuff and then working alongside that person to continue to pull some of those details out of them so that you can work together to cocreate something. Last phase of the conversation is how to close a conversation, which is a really good way of closing a conversation. And there's a not so good way of closing the conversation, right? So those are the different phases of conversation.

So the first thing we want to really focus on just for this episode, right? We're not going to go through the whole thing, you know, but we are going to go through the first part of the conversation phases, which is basically starting a conversation before you say absolutely anything to a person, they are going to more than likely. See First. I, matter of fact, I recommend that they see you first. What I mean by that is don't go sneaking up on someone and be like, Hey, what's up? You know? Weird, right? This is something to definitely keep in mind, right? This is a rule to keep in mind. Don't be weird. I'm going to say that one more time. Do not be weird. You don't have to be weird. You know? And so the reason that's so important is because you show up when the first people see you, you start to activate parts of their brain, right?

And the parts of their brain that are activating, especially if it's something that's on familiar, they're brainy immediately steps into a survival mode. That means that their brain is processing what they're seeing as, should I activate fight or flight? Right now you want to activate your, it's called the, I believe the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the opposite of the fight or flight, right? Which is the rest and digest, which is your resting and digesting versus fighting and flighting. And so in order for you to make that switch for somebody, you have to show up the right way. Right? So Mike, what do you mean by showing up the right way? The way we show up the right way is being very conscious of how we won, look in our presence and to what messages or what signals we're sending with our body language and absolute incredible technique that I practice all the time.

It's called the law soften technique and I didn't come up with it. It's just something that I've practiced enough to be able to teach other folks how to leverage this technique. But matter of fact, it comes out of a book called how to start conversations and make friends. And so the soften technique is an acronym, s, O, l, F, t, e, n. And it starts off with s, which is your smile. And it's so important that when you show up, the first thing that someone sees is a smile. And so we can go into all the important details of a smile, right? The way to tell the difference between whether or not a smile is authentic and the smallest fake. If you show what would the smile already turned on right? Before you even get to know the person's name, what kind of signal disaster then, right?

You look like a creepy serial killer, right? To show that with a smile on your face all the time. And so what I found has been the most effective thing for me to do is that when I show with a smile, I generally make eye contact first. And I, the person acknowledges that I'm another human being standing next to him. And I put on a sly smile. And it may not be anything that I'm showing my teeth, but just enough that the corners of my mouth turn up and that they can see the wrinkles, the crow's feet that show up along my eyes as if I'm squinting. Right. Trying to block my eyes from Sun. That's a really cool visual. If you pretend that the person that you're meeting for the first time at that there, you know as bright as the sun, right? You know you're smiling at them, slice, smile and you've got, you know, your eyes close to demonstrate those crow's feet that show up.

Cause that's what a real smile looks like. So that's your smile piece. There's a really cool technique called the flooding smile. Andy, a flooding smile again, just comes out of another one of those conversation books written by legal lounge, I believe is her name, unless she wrote a series of books on conversation, confidence and those types of things. And so she talks about the flooding smiling. And so the flooding smile is kind of goes after you have already engaged and you meet someone and you learn what their name is. Once they tell you what their name is, that when you slowly apply a smile as if the reason you're smiling is because the name that they gave you is a reason that you're smiling. First off, smiling because someone told you their name should happen anyways because that's awesome and you're learning something new and you're on this discovery mode, right?

The way I said earlier, he made it sound like you're trying to orchestrate this smile, but it's just something to be aware of, right? The more you practice applying a smile at the right time, the more becomes a habit and the less you'll start thinking about it and it'll just become who you are, right? The next part of the soften piece, the Oh, is that you're showing up with open arms. We can see your hands, right? We can see your body language is open. You're facing me head on. I can see, you know you're not closed off. Your arms aren't crossed. Some people say that that's relaxing for them, but it sends a signal that you're closed off and you're not really open to conversation and what you'll find is that the person that you're talking to, they'll start being short with you because of how you're standing.

You're not even realizing it. So very powerful stuff. Some things to keep in mind, right, is making sure that your body position or your body language is open and you're sending signals that encourages their brain to chill out. Right now there's not a survival fight or flight situation. We are finding an opportunity for us to cocreate and in fact thrive, not survive what each other, right? The next portion of soften as the f, when you look at the f, what you're looking at is your ff four forward, lean and forward. Lean is what demonstrates that you are taking an interest in what the other person is saying, right? If you pay attention to how people communicate, if it's something that they're interested in, they will lean slightly forward to pay closer attention. And sometimes you can even send them feel someone doing the opposite, kind of leaning backwards as if they want to create more distance in space from the other person after the F is the C in soften were Stanford touch and out of touch really just talks about a handshake, appropriate ways to shake hands and those types of things.

And uh, it's so important that you know when and how to apply a touch the right way could, that'll increase the intensity or the interaction, which further solidifies the relationship and report at your building with somebody. And a, the last two is e four eye contact. Why, which is important and is a for nodding. Okay. And we can really get into the weeds about every single one of these, but I just wanted to introduce you guys to the acronym soften and we'll pick it up next time on the next episode ever on, hopefully this is making sense to you guys. We could definitely spend multiple episodes, right? Talking about every single individual portion or that soften approach. This is just to start, they get a 30,000 foot view perspective of how we're starting to engage in conversation. You know, one of the things that I think really limits people is just that you don't necessarily have the skill right to do it.

They may be wanting and have the motivation to, but they're just missing the ability. And so that's what I want to help you guys gain Aaron these episodes is the skills that you need to increase your conversation Iq, to get out there, to start creating meaningful relationships and start living the life that you were intended to live, which is surrounded by people that fall in line with your values that are helping you thrive at your cocreating with them. Right? So that's where we're at for today. Want to say thanks again and we'll catch you guys in the next time. Again, my name is Mike Ford. This is the conversation Iq podcast and I truly believe that having quality conversations, being able to engage in quality conversations, we'll save someone's life.

(Outro)
Thank you for joining us on this episode or the conversation Iq podcast. It's always a pleasure just to spend time and share and to encourage and empower folks to be better conversationalist. If you are picking up things that you can implement and you had positive results from that, please share with us. We'd love to hear about your successes. We'd also like to hear about any challenges you are experiencing so that way we can continue to serve the community. We can continue to provide value and continue to eat, equip you with the tools you need for you to be an awesome conversation. This, please check us out at www.conversationiq.co for an opportunity to be a part of our Facebook group "Increasing Conversation IQ". It is www.conversationiq.co we'll see you guys on the next episode.