Vincent Ng - Art of Conversation: Enhance Your Charisma For Success

The Art of Conversation:

Enhance Your Charisma for Success

By Vincent K.C. Ng

Of Conversation Arts

www.ConversationArts.com

2010 Vincent Ng, All Rights Reserved

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface.. page 4

Part 1- Before Speaking a Word

Crash and Burn, then Take Time to Learn.. page 12

Believe you are THE Most Interesting Person to Talk to.. page 21

Conquer Your Social Anxiety. Page 29

First Impressions Should Impress the First Time page 38

Look me in the Eye and Tell Me That.. page 47

Get Your Body to Speak Confidently... page 55

Part 2- The Basics of Conversation

Ladies and Gentlemen, Start your Conversations. page 66

Wow...YOU TOO?! Find Commonalities in Conversations. page 78

Structuring a Good Conversation. page 93

How to Ask Great Questions, Answered. page 104

Creating a Top Ten List of Topics to Talk About page 113

Part 3-Enhancing Your Charisma

The Art of Captivating Storytelling.page 118

Change a Debbie Downer to a Positive Pete. page 130

The Art of Listening: The Yin to the Yang....page 135

Sometimes Silence is Goodpage 140

Going Wide and Deep with Rapport..page 144

Appreciation and the Art of Complimenting page 148

For Your Sanity, Please Exit this Way..page 154

Turn a Negative Criticism into a Positive Statementpage 160

The Importance of Touchingpage 167

Add a Dash of Flirting.. page 179

Crowd Control, How to Start Conversations with Groups of People page189

Part 4-Conversation Blunders

The Put Down: The Unintentional Conversation Killer. page 198

13 Deadly Sins of Conversation... page 204

Epilogue:

Start Now! page 213

About the Author .. page 215

Preface: The Myth of the Naturally Talented Conversationalist

"Talent without discipline is like an octopus on roller skates. There's plenty of movement, but you never know if it's going to be forward, backward of sideways." -H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

A friend has invited you to a party, and youre thinking to yourself, Oh this will be a good chance to meet new people. As you step into the room, theres a sudden rush of nervous energy that goes through your stomach and then through your throat - as if a big lump of coal is stuck there but you cant seem to swallow it.

You take a look around the room and you get the impression that everybody else seems to know each other. You start to sweat. You hear people laughing in the background having such a wonderful time. You see another group of people having an animated conversation and youre standing there wondering to yourself, What do I do next?

Whether youre in line at the grocery market, at a corporate function or at a private party, talking to strangers can be scary. After all, we want to appear charming in front of all people.

If you were anything like me growing up, you probably werent taught the necessary skills to be a social butterfly when the situation warranted. You might have even been taught some lessons that seemed counterintuitive. Have you heard of this one A good conversationalist will do most of the listening? Well if one person does all the listening, then how to do you get to mutually know each other to develop a connection? You dont.

But lets start at the beginning. How did I ever come to the decision to write this book? Ill dive into some background about myself before I answer that question.

When I was going through adolescence, I was the type of person who was afraid to talk to girls my age. I was afraid to be who I wanted to be. I was afraid to speak confidently for the fear that people would laugh at me. I wanted to know how I could be the guy that people wanted to talk to but I never quite found out how. No one around me at the time knew how to do that.

Even to this day, I remember how excruciating certain moments in high school were when I asked out ten different girls and nine of them said no. And the one girl that said yes brought two friends along with her on our date. We never ended up going on a second date.

I even tried writing poetry and giving flowers when asking these girls out. My record in dating at the time was technically zero success rate.

University was no different. I was socially awkward especially around girls. I was doing things that other people were telling me to do that would help me meet girls. I joined clubs, tried to get to know more people to make friends, but it was going nowhere. As a matter of fact, I was part of a fraternity and though I worked hard in trying to improve my social skills, I doubt that any of my fraternity brothers would have considered me the charismatic type.

During those years I was conversationally challenged. And even when sorority girls were coming by the fraternity house on a regular basis, I didnt know what the appropriate social behaviour or topics would be to engage and fascinate them.

M y social circle didnt expand much either. I hung out with my high school friends after I graduated without meeting too many new people, mostly out of comfort. I was afraid of taking the risks of meeting new people and putting in the effort and responsibility. I depended more on luck that I would meet people instead of creating my own luck.

Unfortunately most of my family wasnt much help either - with the exception of my brother who seemed to be quite social. But neither my mother, nor my father offered much advice on how to be more social and how to develop long term friendships that were mutual and growing. It took me years to realize that my parents werent going to be able to teach me the necessary social skills I needed to be a top communicator in society.

I wish I could tell you that my professional life was much better, that I was avidly networking at events hosted by corporations or my faculty, but I wasnt. I was busy trying to build my social life that I completely neglected my networking skills until after I graduated from university.

Networking became a bit of a chore during my early twenties because I didnt know what I was supposed to do. I felt like it was something I had to do, not because I wanted to do. The idea was that if I wanted to be successful I had to network, there was no choice. But the burning question still remained in my head when I went out and networked, How do I connect with these people I see for only a few minutes?

As time went on and with new beliefs and a learning model, I believed that I could improve my social skills tremendously. By using step by step guidelines that I followed in this book, I was able to improve my communication and connection skills exponentially. I dont believe that people are just born with a magic gift for conversation. I think that this magic can be developed and learned.

Thats what I decided to do. I wanted to be a conversational artist that evoked fun, laughter, happiness and joy, creating a word mosaic with each person I talked to, adding to their wonderful tapestry of life. And so began my journey of chatting away with strangers at a variety of places: networking events, seminars, workshops, speed dating events, social mixers, bookstores, cafs, trade shows and even on the streets.

I wanted to be better in my romantic, social and professional relationships. I wanted connect with people, understand them emotionally, have wonderful and enchanting conversations, and I wanted to impact other people, and also have people impact me.

Thats why I decided to write this book. I noticed that there were many people that were going through what I was going through. They were feeling the frustration, struggle and pain in their life. And they just wanted some help on how to get better at connecting with others. They were exhausted from experiencing poor romantic relationships and they were hungering for answers the way I was. These were people I was teaching in my classes. They were people who retired and recently gotten back into the work force. They were teenagers straight out of high school who needed professional conversation skills. And they were entrepreneurs that had great technical knowledge that lacked relationship building skills. And they were lonely single men and women who just wanted to find that special someone in their life.