Read the book: «How to Talk to Anyone: 92 Little Tricks for Big Success in Relationships»

Have you ever admired those successful people who seem to have it all? You see them chatting confidently at business meetings, comfortably at social parties. They’re the ones with the best jobs, the nicest spouses, the coolest friends, the biggest bank accounts, the most fashionable postcodes.

But wait a minute! A lot of them aren’t cleverer than you. They’re not more educated than you. They’re not even better looking! So what is it? (Some people suspect they inherited it. Others say they married it, or were just plain lucky. Tell them to think again.) What it boils down to is their more skilful way of dealing with fellow human beings.

You see, nobody gets to the top alone. Over the years, people who seem to ‘have it all’ have captured the hearts and conquered the minds of hundreds of others who helped boost them, rung by rung, to the top of whatever corporate or social ladder they chose.

Wannabes wandering around at the foot of the ladder often gaze up and complain that the Big Boys and Big Girls at the top are snobs. When Big Players don’t give them their friendship, love, or business, they call them ‘cliquish’ or accuse them of belonging to an ‘old-boy network.’ Some grumble they hit their heads against a ‘glass ceiling.’

The complaining Little Leaguers never realize the rejection was their own fault. They’ll never know they blew the affair, the friendship, or the deal due to their own communications fumbles. Why don’t they see it? Because some of the moves Big Winners make are so smooth, so subtle, it takes another Big Winner to recognize them.

The old boys – in the days when top management was, unfortunately, mainly old boys – complimented each other by saying, ‘Buddy, you ain’t no accident.’ They bestowed this slang tribute with a tinge of jealousy when one old boy saw some sensitive act the other had executed.

Indeed, today the old (and not so old) boys and girls who run our country, our corporations, and our arts ‘ain’t no accident.’ Each has a bag of tricks, a magic, a Midas touch that turns everything they do into success.

What’s in their bag of tricks? You’ll find a lot of things: There’s a substance that solidifies friendships, a wizardry that wins minds, and a magic that makes people fall in love with them. There’s also a quality that makes bosses hire and then promote, a characteristic that keeps clients coming back, and an asset that makes customers buy from them and not the competition. We all have a few of those tricks in our bags, some more than others. Those with a whole lot of them are Big Winners in life. How to Talk to Anyone gives you ninety-two of these little tricks used by Big Winners so you, too, can play the game to perfection and get whatever you want in life.

How the techniques were developed

Many years ago, a drama teacher, exasperated at my bad acting in a college play, shouted, ‘No! No! Your body is belying your words. Every tiny movement, every body position,’ he howled, ‘divulges your private thoughts. Your face can make seven thousand different expressions, and each exposes precisely who you are and what you are thinking at any particular moment.’ Then he said something I’ll never forget: ‘And your body! The way you move is your autobiography in motion.’

How right he was! On the stage of real life, every physical move you make subliminally tells everyone in eyeshot the story of your life. Dogs hear sounds our ears can’t detect. Bats see shapes in the darkness that elude our eyes. And people make moves that are beneath human consciousness but have tremendous power to attract or repel. Every smile, every frown, every syllable you utter, every arbitrary choice of word that passes between your lips, can draw others toward you, or make them want to run away.

Men, did your gut feeling ever tell you to jump ship on a deal? Women, did your women’s intuition make you accept or reject an offer? On a conscious level, we may not be aware of what the hunch is. But like the ear of the dog or the eye of the bat, the elements that make up subliminal sentiments are very real.

Imagine, please, two humans in a complex box wired with circuits to record all the signals flowing between the two. As many as 10,000 units of information flow per second. ‘Probably the lifetime efforts of roughly half the adult population of the United States would be required to sort the units in one hour’s interaction between two subjects,’ a University of Pennsylvania communications authority estimates.¹

With the zillions of subtle actions and reactions zapping back and forth between two human beings, can we come up with concrete techniques to make our every communication clear, confident, credible, and charismatic?

Determined to find the answer, I read practically every book written on communications skills, charisma, and chemistry between people. I explored hundreds of studies conducted around the world on what qualities made up leadership and credibility. Intrepid social scientists left no stone unturned in their quest to find the formula. For example, optimistic Chinese researchers, hoping charisma might be in the diet, went so far as to compare the relationship of personality type to the catecholamine level in subjects’ urine.² Needless to say, their thesis was soon shelved!

Most of the studies simply confirmed Dale Carnegie’s 1936 classic, How to Win Friends and Influence People.³ His wisdom for the ages said success lay in smiling, showing interest in other people, and making them feel good about themselves. ‘That’s no surprise,’ I thought. It’s as true today as it was over sixty years ago.

So if Dale Carnegie and hundreds of others since offer the same astute advice, why do any of us lack the right stuff to win friends and influence people?

Suppose a sage told you, ‘When in China, speak Chinese’ – but gave you no language lessons? Dale Carnegie and many communications experts are like that sage. They tell us what to do, but not how to do it. In today’s sophisticated world, it’s not enough to say ‘smile’ or ‘give sincere compliments.’ Cynical business people today see more subtleties in your smile, more complexities in your compliment. Accomplished or attractive people are surrounded by smiling sycophants feigning interest and fawning all over them. Prospects are tired of salespeople who say, ‘The suit looks great on you,’ when their fingers are caressing cash register keys. Women are wary of suitors who say, ‘You are beautiful,’ when the bedroom door is in view.

The world is a very different place than it was in 1936, and we need a new formula for success. To find it, I observed the superstars of today. I explored techniques used by top salespeople to close the sale, speakers to convince, clergy to convert, performers to engross, sex symbols to seduce, and athletes to win.

I found concrete building blocks to the elusive qualities that lead to their success.

Then I broke them down into easily digestible, news-you-can-use techniques. I gave each a name that will quickly come to mind when you find yourself in a communications conundrum. As I developed the techniques, I began sharing them with audiences around the US. Participants in my communications seminars gave me their ideas. My clients, many of them CEOs of Fortune 500 companies^*, enthusiastically offered their observations.

When I was in the presence of the most successful and beloved leaders, I analyzed their body language, their facial expressions. I listened carefully to their casual conversations, their timing, and their choice of words. I watched as they dealt with their families, their friends, their associates, and their adversaries. Every time I detected a little nip of magic in their communicating, I asked them to pluck it out with tweezers and expose it to the bright light of consciousness. We analyzed it together, and I then turned it into a technique others could duplicate and profit from.

In this book are my findings and the strokes of some of those very effective folks. Some are subtle. Some are surprising. But all are achievable. When you master them, everyone from new acquaintances to family, friends, and business associates will happily open their hearts, their homes, their companies, even their wallets to give you whatever they can.

There’s a bonus. As you sail through life with your new communications skills, you’ll look back and see some very happy givers smiling in your wake.

* The top 500 companies in terms of turnover every year, as listed in Fortune magazine.

There are two kinds of people in this life:

Those who walk into a room and say, ‘Well, here I am!’

And those who walk in and say, ‘Ahh, there you are.’

The moment two humans lay eyes on each other has awesome potency. The first sight of you is a brilliant holograph. It burns its way into your new acquaintance’s eyes and can stay emblazoned in his or her memory forever.

Artists are sometimes able to capture this quicksilver, fleeting emotional response. I have a friend, Robert Grossman, an accomplished caricature artist who draws regularly for Forbes, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, Rolling Stone and other popular North American publications. Bob has a unique gift for capturing not only the physical appearance of his subjects, but zeroing in on the essence of their personalities. The bodies and souls of hundreds of luminaries radiate from his sketch pad. One glance at his caricatures of famous people and you can see, for instance, the insecure arrogance of Madonna, the imperiousness of Newt Gingrich, the bitchiness of Leona Helmsley.

Sometimes at a party, Bob will do a quick sketch on a cocktail napkin of a guest. Hovering over Bob’s shoulder, the onlookers gasp as they watch their friend’s image and essence materialize before their eyes. When he’s finished drawing, he puts his pen down and hands the napkin to the subject. Often a puzzled look comes over the subject’s face. He or she usually mumbles some politeness like, ‘Well, er, that’s great. But it really isn’t me.’

The crowd’s convincing crescendo of ‘Oh yes it is!’ drowns the subject out and squelches any lingering doubt. The confused subject is left to stare back at the world’s view of himself or herself in the napkin.

Once when I was visiting Bob’s studio, I asked him how he could capture people’s personalities so well. He said, ‘It’s simple. I just look at them.’

‘No,’ I asked, ‘How do you capture their personalities? Don’t you have to do a lot of research about their lifestyle, their history?’

‘No, I told you, Leil, I just look at them.’

‘Huh?’

He went on to explain, ‘Almost every facet of people’s personalities is evident from their appearance, their posture, the way they move. For instance …’ he said, calling me over to a file where he kept his caricatures of political figures.

‘See,’ Bob said, pointing to angles on various presidential body parts, ‘here’s the boyishness of Clinton,’ showing me his half smile; ‘the awkwardness of George Bush,’ pointing to his shoulder angle; ‘the charm of Reagan,’ putting his finger on the ex-president’s smiling eyes; ‘the shiftiness of Nixon,’ pointing to the furtive tilt of his head. Digging a little deeper into his file, he pulled out Franklin Delano Roosevelt and, pointing to the nose high in the air, ‘Here’s the pride of FDR.’ It’s all in the face and the body.

First impressions are indelible. Why? Because in our fast-paced information-overload world of multiple stimuli bombarding us every second, people’s heads are spinning. They must form quick judgments to make sense of the world and get on with what they have to do. So, whenever people meet you, they take an instant mental snapshot. That image of you becomes the data they deal with for a very long time.