He want to listen to you say some nice thing about him
Remember that the people you are to talk to spend most of their time when they are not concerned with the problems of business, in thinking about and justifying and glorifying themselves. Remember that the average man will be more concerned about the cook leaving than about Italy paying her debts to the United States, He will be more wrought up over a dull razor blade than over a revolution in South America. His own toothache will distress him more than an earthquake in Asia destroying half a million lives. He would rather listen to you say some nice thing about him than hear you discuss the ten greatest men in history.
The reason so many people are poor conversationalists is because they talk about only the things that interest them. That may be deadly boring to others. Reverse the process. Lead the other person into talking about his interests, his business, his golf score, his successor, if it is a mother, her children. Do that and listen intently and you will give pleasure; consequently you will be considered a good conversationalist?even though you have done very little of the talking.
How to be a good conversationalist
The only reason that you do not do everything you think of is because another idea?the uselessness of it, the expense, the trouble, the absurdity, the danger or some such thought?arises to slay the impulse. So in the last analysis, our problem of getting people to accept our beliefs or to act upon our suggestions, is just this: to plant the idea in their minds and to keep contradictory and opposing ideas from arising. He who is skilled in doing that will have power in speaking and profit in business.
Has Psychology any suggestions that will prove helpful to you in this connection? Emphatically, yes. Let us see what they are. First, haven't you noticed that contradictory ideas are much less likely to arise in your mind when the main idea is presented with feeling and contagious enthusiasm? I say "contagious," for enthusiasm is just that. It lulls the critical faculties.
We advance by sudden jerks and abrupt starts.
We never learn anything--be it golf, French, or public speaking--by means of gradual improvement. We advance by sudden jerks and abrupt starts. Then we may remain stationary for a few weeks, or even lose some of the proficiency we have gained. Psychologists call these periods of stagnation "plateaus in the curve of learning." We may strive hard for a long time and not be able to get off one of these "plateaus" and onto an upward ascent again. Some men, not realizing this curious fact about the way we progress, get discouraged on these plateaus and abandon all effort. That is extremely regrettable, for if they were to persist, if they were to keep on practising, they would suddenly find that they had lifted like an aeroplane and made tremendous progress again overnight.
You must really wish it
"your passion for the subject will save you. If you only care enough for a result, you will most certainly attain it. If you wish to be rich, you will be rich; if you wish to be learned, you will be learned: if you wish to be good, you will be good. Only you must, then, really wish these things and wish them with exclusiveness, and not wish at the same time a hundred other incompatible things just as strongly."
"If you want to be a confident public speaker, you will be a confident public speaker. But you must really wish it."
Good delivery is conversational tone
If you, my dear reader, speak in public so that people hearing you will suspect that you have had training in public speaking, you will not be a credit to your instructor. He desires you to speak with such intensified and exalted naturalness that your auditors will never dream that you have been trained. A good window does not call attention to itself. It merely lets in the light. A good speaker is like that. He is so natural that his hearers never notice his manner of speaking; they are conscious only of his matter.
Good delivery is conversational tone and directness enlarged. Talk to the Chamber of Commerce just as you would to John Smith. What is the Chamber of Commerce, after all, but a collection of John Smiths?
How are you affected by clothes?
Dress neatly, attractively. The consciousness of being well dressed heightens one's self-respect, increases his self-confidence. If a speaker has baggy trousers, unkempt shoes, ungroomed hair, fountain pen and pencils peeping out of his coat pocket, the audience is liable to feel as little respect for him as he seems to feel for himself.
--- 본문 중에서