Ep05: Conversation Starters

On this Episode, Mike shares his experience starting conversations and explains the different categories of conversation openers.

---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 the conversation Iq podcast with Mike Ford. Last episode was about the friendship formula. Again, I highly recommend you check it out. Something that I picked up from a doctor Jack Schafer in his book, the light switch, and not to get too deep into it. It really shows you how you can start to maximize your time, optimize your time that you're spending with folks, so that way you're ensuring that what you're doing is creating a deeper friendship and deeper relationship. If that is what you desire to do. A lot of our relationships in life that extends from home to work, um, business that they revolve around at least having some semblance of a friendship, being able to develop rapport with somebody. So highly recommend you check it out. Last episode on the friendship formula. This episode I want to get into, one of my favorite topics is conversation openers.

I know we've been hanging out at that 30,000 foot view perspective. When we talk about the conversation ladder, again, it's breaking the ice, moving from breaking the ice to deepening the conversation from deepening the conversation to now making a connection. So relating with that person, making connections. The next step after that is that we get to a place where we can now pull that individual's dreams up to the surface, right? We've gotten deep enough where their wants, desires and hurts reside and now we're able to identify it. Now, opportunities for us to cocreate with them, for us to genuinely extend our life to help that individual achieve something to here she has been working on achieving, right? And then after that is the closing of the conversation. And closing the conversation is also important because you can close a conversation or wrong way following all of what you've done to really have conversation in the first place.

So we'll talk about how to close it, how to make sure that you're having purposeful and driven conversation. So right now we're talking about breaking the ice. So openers, there's actually three categories of openers that I like to teach people when we're talking about developing their conversation skills categories or this, there's general conversation openers, there's specific conversation openers, and then are strategic openers. So what's a general conversation opener? The general conversation opener is just simply you make a general observation. So for example, I'm standing in line at a bank and there is someone standing in front of me or next to me that I would like to engage in conversation with. So a general observation like this, is it always this busy during the day or is this line usually this long? There's not enough cashiers helping out folks. That's crazy. You basically you're speaking what you are thinking right out loud and that encourages or gives the other person a chance to turn around and say, Oh man, yeah, no joke.

Or for them to respond. And in some sort of way, as you can see it's not as effective, right as some of the other openers, but it's still a way to engage passively in conversation. I use general conversation openers when I'm in a place that is pretty exciting to be in. So I know that the chances of me getting a response from someone is a little higher. The next category of conversation openers are specific conversation openers and that's when you're specifically talking about something on that individual or maybe even a US specifically around kind of where they're at. So there, I mean by that same example, we're in a bank standing in a line next to someone who I want to engage in conversation with and um, I see them on their phone and I very politely say, Hey, is that the new iPhone 10 or the new, you know, galaxy, whatever the galaxy fold.

This is a two part opener. The first part is to ask the question and the second part is keeping the door open because the question that the individual is going to ask you immediately or at least at they're asking internally is why is this person talking to me? And the crazy thing is that me, you as the conversation initiators, sometimes we think that because that's what they're asking, that they don't want to talk to it. However, it's better for us not to assume that the person doesn't want to talk to us because if we do what we think will reflect or manifest and how we are nonverbal or coming across, it's called the spotlight effect, right? It's when you step into a situation and you think that that other person knows and is aware of what you are doing and how you're doing things like the reality is is that person is in their own world and what you are doing stepping into their world is it activates your natural instinct, which is their brain starts to scan and tried to identify, Hey, is there any danger?

Okay, so here we go. We first start the opener. We say, Hey, is that the iPhone, whatever. Is that the galaxy fold? You know? Oh man, I really like those shoes. You know those specific openers to get the door open and then you to keep the door open by asking a follow on question that explains why you're asking or you're saying the opening at you're saying cell phone example. Hey is that the new iPhone 10 I'm asking him because I seen a couple of those and I'm thinking about making a transition from android to apple or I've got a couple of buddies that have the iPhone and they really like it. Just curious. You know what do you use it for? Those type of questions that you are asking, what you're doing is that you are communicating directly to that person's emotional part of their brain, right?

That or the part of the brain that is trying to identify whether this is a fight or flight situation and when you ask the follow on question confidently, which is really important, right? For men talking to men. Some of the nonverbal things that are important for when you're talking to men is that you actually stand side by side with the man, which is like, because we're naturally fixers for us to be facing a problem like our bodies facing. This is kind of funny, but our bodies facing something together if feels the message that we're sending is that we are working together to fix something. Whether it's working together to answer a question or whatever the case is, right? So that is something to keep in mind when you engage in conversation, when you're talking to a man, you're standing side by side with them and kind of like you guys are creating this half circle that looking at or addressing the issue that you're trying to fix together when you're talking to women is actually better to be face to face with women so that they can see that you're not hiding, you're fully, you know here there's nothing going on.

So for women it creates a sense of security forum when they can see everything that's happening. I wrecked me in front of a very different from what men are looking for right when it comes to the standing side by side with men and everything like that. So, so back on the example you mentioned something about the phone and then you follow up with another question that allows you to keep the door open and now you're engaging in a dialogue with the individual and the conversation starts from there and now you're in a place where you may get more than a few words. It's really important that the question that you ask that keep the door open is not a closed question, which is a closed question with a question that a warrant they yes or no answer. So Hey, is that the new iPhone x?

Do you like it very different from, hey, is that the new iPhone next? How do you like it? That person will launch into that's versus a yes. I like the phone and versus a man, I like it a lot. You know, have my old phone that I had, boom, boom. I transitioned into this fall and now I've got these things I like to do with it. And this is the thing, right? There are more people in the world that actually want to engage in conversation and there are not. And what I've learned and what I've experienced is that there's people that want to engage in conversation, but they're waiting for someone else's start to conversation or are people don't realize that they want us to have conversation. And so their body language that they give off is one that they're not open to the conversation. But in reality, your mind is on.

I'm protecting myself out here in the wild. Does that make sense? Hopefully. Makes Sense. Okay, cool. So that's a specific openers. The third category of openers is your strategic opener. The more complex that the opener gets, you know, which it doesn't need to be this complex, but strategic openers are cool because it's more for folks who are pretty confident in their ability to start conversations and maintain dialogue and all that. So it gives you a chance to try a couple of things. So some of the strategic openers that I've used is, you know, one of those where you step into a situation, you see someone and you're like, hey, you look like somebody I know that I grew up with, right? Like, Hey, help me out. Why I know you from and you look really familiar. What that does is it starts to engage that person into a problem solving mode, right?

Because you're answering that question like, hey, why is this person talking to me? And at the same time, it then engages them. It forces your brain to move from their limbic system, right? So that that fight or flight, which is the lower our road when it comes to their response to fear, the low road response. So the high road response, so you are helping that individual engaged their prefrontal cortex, they're higher thinking for them to go through the process of trying to recall where you all might have met and all that. Right? It's really important that you have a purpose behind doing that. So for me, when I launched into those kinds of openers, I'm usually doing it because what I want to do is identify entrepreneurs. I want to connect with people who are thinking the way that I'm thinking and I'm looking for people that I can partner with and potentially work as far as business partnering goals.

So when I asked that question, I'm asking because I want to follow up with, you know, hey, maybe you might have been a part of some of the business conferences or business seminars I've been to. Do you read any of the grant Cardone's books or have you checked out the tedx conferences or anything like that? Are you into anything entrepreneurial? Right. Those are some cool things I can try to connect. And the funny thing is there have been a handful of times where I've opened like that as someone has actually responded with. Yeah, it was actually, you know, in the same whatever are actually was at that conference or I'll I was deployed with, with this guy who knows his dude and we are in the same unit in incident relate-ability instant connection and now you're starting to kind of really develop rapport pretty quickly.

What I recommend though is if you're getting started is to just get into the habit of doing the general conversation openers because a lot of times we get stuck in our head about what do I say to the person and I want to talk to and how do I approach them and all that, and the reality is if you would get out of your head to verbalize what is it you're thinking that's enough to engage or have someone at least acknowledged that you are and create that next year, I break the ice to make an interruption so that they notice you. That's where we're at today. I just wanted to go through some of the openers as we're making our way along the conversational ladder. This is something that has to be practiced and are very nuanced things that happened in that exchange, but it's worth looking into further and getting out and trying on your own because that's where the most of the learning is going to happen. That's where you're really going to develop your experience and everything like that. So I'm done with this episode, right? Again, I appreciate you guys tuning in. We'll see you on the next one.

(Outro)
Thank you for joining us on this episode of 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 equip you with the tools you need for you to be an awesome conversationalist. 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.