How To Become Friends With Anyone (Or As Some Call it, “Well-Liked”)
One of the most consistently useful skills I’ve seen people have in their lives was the ability to make people like them. This is useful in your job, social life and your family life.
Now, notice what this article does NOT say in the headline. It does not say, “How to Become SOULMATES with Anyone”. This is not about becoming the most charismatic person in the room, or the social butterfly that is notorious for this or that.
A lot of people think the key to having a ton of friends is about being the most charismatic, cool, funny person in the room. And they are “half” right on this — it is about being charismatic, funny and cool.
But it’s not about being the most charismatic or cool person in the room.
The point of this article is to show you the baseline level of what you need to become someone that is “well-liked”. To be “well-liked”, you do not need anything special. You do not need to be born with some special talent, or have anything materialistically cool.
To be “well-liked”, you only need to be about 10% more (insert some likable) adjective than the average person.
I admit it is hard to be born with talent, materialism…all that stuff. But you know what’s not hard? Doing a few simple, small things that go a really long way with most people. No, you’re not going to be well-liked by everyone, but that’s the point. You will be “generally” well liked by enough people, and that’s exactly where you want to be. People who are in this category of “well-liked” do not need to be liked by everyone, because they probably have enough people in their life that they can choose who they can pursue deeper relationships with!
In case the benefits of being “well-liked” aren’t yet obvious to you, here are some very realistic, achievable benefits you will glean from reading this article:
- You will start getting invited to way cooler events, and more of them
- People will listen to you and care what you have to say
- People will come to you with business ideas and opportunities that you previously never got
- You will attract higher quality people. Who will then in turn, transform you into a higher quality person. Which helps you become better friends with ever more awesome people
- The next time it’s between you and an equally skilled person for a promotion or job, you will get chosen
If any of that seems awesome to you, keep reading. Here are a few very real practical tips you can put to use right away that will bring more quality people in your life.
Do not talk about yourself within the first few minutes of meeting them, until you are asked.
There are enough Inc. articles and Dale Carnegie rip-offs out there that include “Listen” as the №1 thing you have to do when meeting people. And don’t get me wrong — that’s a very good point. However, in order to effectively listen, you need to have a practical way to do it.
In order for someone to like you, you and they must have a decently candid, genuine conversation. For that to happen, you should avoid talking about yourself…in 99% of situations. Sure, if you’re Bill Gates and the guy is an aspiring entrepreneur, that’s an exception.
However, most of the time, what people actually care about is themselves. So, if you spend the first few minutes of the conversation deferring to them, you will get a few minutes of solid conversation in, for sure.
Now, here’s the real key — wait until they ask you something about yourself after the first few minutes. Will they do that, Bruce?
Well, right here you have your first litmus test. In 95% of social situations I’ve been in, it is incredibly rude for a person to completely shut out and ignore the person talking to them. Even girls who get hit on by 100 guys at the bar in one night still ask the token question of, “What about you?” after some chode hits on her for 40 minutes.
So, again, think about being 10% less boring than the average person. If you appear to actually be listening, mirror their speech or body language, I guarantee you that person will eventually ask you something about you. And when they do, it will mentally register in their brain that they are now engaging YOU in the conversation.
After the first few minutes, make them feel slightly more important. The person you are talking to has talked about themselves for a few minutes and is now asking you about them. They are invested in the conversation. At this point, you should be doing the talking. Here’s where most people make the mistake of not doing two things: offering value and letting their guard down. Some of my favourite examples of both:
Value:
- Making the other person feel important in a sincere way. Let’s suppose you are a wine snob, and the other person is drinking a vintage Merlot that you really like. Your compliment is automatically worth twice as much as a person who chooses to comment on the Merlot who doesn’t know anything about wine.
- Introducing another person that doesn’t suck. This might be something you do later on to really solidify your new friendship, but is a great move to keep things going if things are going stale.
Letting guard down:
- Smiling
- Saying something silly
- Slight (seriously) slight self-degradation
If you do some variation of both of those things right after, mixed in with a bit of normal conversation, some decent eye contact and a non-confrontational tonality, you’re already ahead of everyone else.
Side note: A lot of people say you should start a conversation by smiling as wide as you can and being friendly. This is not a bad approach but in my opinion, not the best one. Why? Because people let their guard down too early in a conversation are sub-communicating one crucial thing that kills them — that they are nice by default.
People who are nice by default are not normally people who are actually this way. They are this way because they have no choice; being their true selves got them negative feedback, and thus, they have to kiss everyone’s asses to have friends. Of course, it is better than the alternative of being a jerk to everyone.
People who are well-liked do not have to be nice to everyone just because they have to. They are nice to people because they genuinely get along.
Start a conversation thread based on one of their interests, then segway it into your own. The best way to continue to build value in the conversation is to tell a familiar story to the other person. How do you do this? All you have to do is listen to the other person talk (you don’t even have to be that engaged, to be honest). You then pick out one noun that they said and start a story based on that.
Let’s say your new friend was talking about snowboarding. You might want to talk about how your hometown is Vancouver, BC, where they have awesome ski hills. Boom, the conversation just got so much better than just was.
From this point forward, all you have to do is continue to have a back in forth conversation that does the same thing — start a familiar thread and build upon it. This is a concept that many people use in improv to get people to come out of their shells and has been used in many of the world’s best teams (sports, companies) to build close-knit, functional teams everywhere.
Now, there are infinitely many ways to build rapport and become someone that is “well-liked”. However, these are three things you can easily implement: shut up about yourself, make other people feel kind of important and kind of listen to what they say and add to it. It’s really that simple.
