Gennglobal discusses ways on how to be a more precise communicator

1. Thoughts
and
inspirations
from
HOW TO BECOME A
BETTER
CONVERSATIONALIST

2.  Talking with other people goes hand-in-hand with
career success—it is very difficult to have one without
the other in the business realm.
 Conversation skills are incredibly important for
effectively bonding with your fellow coworkers, with
your clients, and especially for leading others. These
skills are beneficial in the area of networking and
cultivating professional relationships.
 However, this can prove incredibly difficult if you are
shy or if you simply don’t like to talking to other people.
 Next, we will provide you with some tips that should
help turn you into a social savant!
INTRODUCTION

4.  The first step is obvious: listen! Listening to the person
you are talking with can keep your conversation, well, a
conversation, as opposed to a dialogue that you could
easily be giving to a wall or a person.
 By listening closely to your conversation partner, you
will be able to pick up on social cues that will help you
determine how well the conversation is going, as well as
providing you the opportunity to think of follow-up
questions/topics that can keep the conversation
moving forward.
HOW TO BECOME A BETTER
CONVERSATIONALIST

5.  Speak slowly and deliberately.
 It can become easy to sloppily mash words and
sentences together when you get talking too quickly,
which can obviously lead to some miscommunications.
 Instead, be deliberate and slightly slower than you
normally would be when talking.
 It’s not a race! As long as you’re talking at a
reasonable speed and people can understand what
you’re saying, you’ll be fine.
HOW TO BECOME A BETTER
CONVERSATIONALIST

7.  Avoid one-word replies to questions—these are
conversation killers!
 Cut the filler and formalities of conversation for actual
interactions. Get rid of those “Hello, how are you?”
exchanges at the beginning of your conversations.
 Try developing a backlog of talking points that you can
draw from in case your conversation runs dry. If you are
preparing for a specific event, try preparing based on
the context of the situation you’ll be in. For example,
prepare some networking-specific topics if you will be
at a networking event.
HOW TO BECOME A BETTER
CONVERSATIONALIST

8.  Similarly, try developing a list of talking points based on
your personal life. This will allow you to become
comfortable in awkward situations by talking about
things you enjoy.
 Additionally, this kind of strategy can encourage you to
expand your personal life to include more interests,
which is a great supplemental benefit to becoming a
better conversationalist!
HOW TO BECOME A BETTER
CONVERSATIONALIST

10.  Last but not least, don’t fear silence! In some
conversations, silence is a perfectly reasonable things
to occur from time to time. In fact, it is often necessary
at some points.
 Consider: if your goal was to constantly be talking with
someone, you would probably appear to be a bit odd,
and your conversations probably wouldn’t last that
long.
 Always remember that silence is not to be feared!
HOW TO BECOME A BETTER
CONVERSATIONALIST