Effective Communication

Do You Make These Common Mistakes When Meeting New People?

The ability to make a great first impression is a valuablelife skill that can help you to have all you want in life -in business and socially.

As you improve your people skills you can expect greaterhappiness, more success and an abundance of opportunitiesfor personal growth. That is, once you have identified andeliminated the most common barriers to great conversation.

Let´s identify the five common mistakes people make whenmeeting new people.

• Trying too hard to be liked. - Although we all want to be liked, ironically, the worst wayto win approval is to desperately need it. When you are tooneedy it repels people. They sense that you do not valueyourself and as a result they are more likely to treat youharshly.Thankfully there is a solution. The more you love andapprove of yourself the more others will tend to like you.People reflect back what you feel about yourself so make apoint of building your self-esteem and notice the positivechange in how pleased people are to meet you.
• Pretending to be something you are not. - In our efforts to impress new people it can be tempting tosuddenly reinvent ourselves so as to make a good firstimpression. This tactic rarely works because it is verydifficult to project a false persona unless you are a verygood actor.Very often all that happens is that you feel tense andunder pressure to play the role you have invented while theother person is unable to trust you. Invariably you fail tomake a good first impression and even risk making a fool ofyourself.It is far better to be natural and to express your truepersonality. When you do so with confidence others will bemuch more likely to accept and like you for who you reallyare.Think about it.It is much easier to like and respect someone who isgenuine and honest about who they are. In fact beingauthentic is one of the most attractive qualities you candevelop.
• Prejudging the other person. - We all do it at times. We take one look at someone anddecide before even talking to him what kind of person he is.Call it mind reading if you like but making suchassumptions and pre judements can severely affect how muchfun you have meeting new people.This attitude can stop you from approaching people, causeyou to miss out on making new friends and make it difficultfor new people to get your undivided attention when gettingto know you.A more practical approach is to allow each person theopportunity to speak before you decide what the person isall about. And make sure to switch off your assumptions fora moment to really listen to what is being said.
• Talking too much and not listeningSometimes because of nerves it can be tempting to keeptalking to ensure there are no awkward silences. The trouble with this habit is that eventually you stoplistening when the other person is speaking because you usethat times to think of what to say next. Let the other person share the load. Give her an opportunity to lead the conversation, listen closely towhat is said and then develop the conversation based onwhat she has contributed.When you do this, meeting new people is a lot lessstressful -- making conversation becomes a team effortrather than a struggle to keep talking.

Letting the other person control the conversation. When you meet someone for the first time it is reasonable to expect some breaks in the conversation until you discover topics of common interest.Remaining passive during these pauses means waiting for theother person to either drive the conversation forward orend it. If you adopt this attitude you are giving upcontrol of the conversation.

posted by Indira Bandari @ 7:45 PM