If you’ve ever met a salesperson who you know was just killing it commission-wise, you’ll probably know the feeling I refer to below. They’ve got a certain smoothness about them that puts people at ease, and it feels like they can charm their way into anyone’s good graces in record time.
This is some next level charisma and social fluency, because even though you’re aware they’re a salesperson and have a singular goal in mind, they don’t appear like they’re selling anything at all… until you return home with a shopping bag full of Gorilla Glue.
They just seem to have that it factor that draws people to them and allows them to adapt to any kind of conversation signal from others.
Above all else, all of their behaviors and habits seem to flow so naturally…
Stop right there.
Yes, it’s amazingly tempting to believe that such people are just born with the gift of gab, and that you can never attain those heights for yourself.
This is remarkably and completely wrong, and as I’ll discuss later, an all-too-common excuse we tell ourselves. If you were to interview any of the people that you would label as possessing social fluency, I’m positive that they would all tell you that it’s something they’ve worked on consciously.
Maybe it’s always been a strength of theirs, but that doesn’t mean that salesman just woke up with the ability to sell ice to an eskimo. There’s a reason that the salesman probably wasn’t young and green – more experience and practice, and practice makes perfect.
This is wonderful news for you because this is the exact reason you bought this book… in the hopes that such skills were learnable, right? To gain actionable items and steps to improve your social fluency?
Good, because social success is learned behavior.
One more time. Social success? Oh yeah, it’s learned.
At our most basic level, human beings learn by watching. As the old saying goes, “Monkey see, monkey do.” We learn by imitation, modeling and observation.
It’s how babies learn to walk, talk, and interact with the world. And as adults, if we watch how the fattest monkey gets all of his bananas, we can eventually learn his methods and prosper in the same way.
This is an important realization because if you’re not enjoying the kind of social fluency and success that you want, it’s because you have simply modeled your behavior on the wrong patterns and role models. All you have to do is reset some patterns, model off new behaviors, and you’re on your way to everything that social fluency can do for you.
Unfortunately, humans are also creatures of habit.
It’s incredibly easy for us to become stuck in our ways once we establish some semblance of working patterns. We stick with them because it’s a ton of work to seek out new patterns… and we’re scared that anything new won’t work as well as what we currently have. You also see this type of behavior in relationships, friendships, jobs, and anything else that requires taking an iota of risk in our lives.
But once you’re aware of this modeling behavior and the simple cause and effect, you should be able to more easily shift your frame of reference to observing social behaviors after those that you would want to copy.
You can sure as hell improve yourself in each and every way that you want… no one is born being able to deliver a speech like Martin Luther King, Jr. Just don’t expect it to be easy, and recognize that you’ll have to break down years of habits and preconceived notions.
But nothing worth having in this life comes easily, does it?
Luckily, this process gets easier with time because as with all learning and conditioning, it becomes subconscious after a certain point. You notice behaviors that get positive outcomes, and you take note for later without even noticing.
But before we get there, try the following experiment. Go out with a socially fluent friend of yours into a high stress social setting. I’m talking about a super loud bar, a situation where you know almost no one, or even a club.
Then just sit back in a corner with a drink and watch your friend. Don’t tell them what you’re doing or else they’ll get self-conscious and won’t act as they normally do.
Watch how they navigate the room. Look at their eyes, their face, and how their mannerisms change from each person they are talking to. How they include everyone and confer comfort easily. Notice how they adjust their behavior based on the direct external stimuli they receive and how they react to it.
Learn which behaviors and habits are situational. Observe what responses trigger particular reactions from other people, both negative and positive. When someone does X, should you do Y or Z? When you talk about A, do people react like B or C? What kinds of jokes are told to include people?
Take particular notice of how to create an upward spiral of amazing feelings and goodwill about you. That’s social fluency.
Become the person that lights up a room and absolutely owns a conversation in an instantly likeable way… you can become that person. No one is born with these skills innately, and they were all learned to some degree. Just because they focused on some patterns that you didn’t immediately catch doesn’t mean you can’t catch up to them now!
It’s not an overnight process, but committing fully will shorten your learning curve substantially.
Monkey see, monkey do. Go get your bananas.
