For the past several years, I\u2019ve been urging seminar participants (and anyone else who will listen) to take the initiative in starting conversations with total strangers. It\u2019s something that comes naturally to me, but when I started getting questions about how to actually do it, I analyzed how I go about it. Some of it is purely intuitive, of course, but there are also some behavioral components.\n<\/p>\n
Whether you\u2019re standing in line at the post office or waiting for a train, here are a few ideas to help you uncover the fascinating folks around you.<\/p>\n
When I hopped into a London taxi that was covered in promotional material for the Rolling Stones, i suspected I had a fascinating chat ahead of me. And I did. I learned that my driver was the only cab in the city promoting the Stones, that he earned an extra \u00a3750 a year by putting advertising on his cab, and that he\u2019d once advertised for the South African Tourist Board and got a free trip to the country as a bonus. He was hoping he might get tickets to the Stones concert this time around.\n<\/p>\n
\u00b0 Be politely curious.<\/strong> Our reluctance to talk to strangers may be caused by thinking it\u2019s about us. Wrong. It\u2019s about them. Yes, you might be subjected to a tedious story now and then, but it\u2019s worth the risk.\n<\/p>\n One of my most memorable conversations was with a young man who was a linguistic professor who spoke seven languages. (How do you think I learned that?) I asked him the best way to learn a language and his reply was, \u201cBe a kid.\u201d I laughed and asked him, \u201cWhat\u2019s the second best?\u201d The entire trip turned out to be an interview with me learning a lot about linguistics.\n<\/p>\n Those are the moments that keep me talking to strangers who unknowingly enrich my life. And like everything else, it gets easier with practice. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n By the way, you don’t need to be on a trip to do this. Social networking provides wonderful opportunities every single day to start up a conversation with someone who is about to stop being a stranger. If you’d like to develop some ease with that, join Christine Gallagher and me for our upcoming teleclass, Conversation Transformation<\/a><\/em>. We were strangers until we met on Twitter.<\/p>\n _______________________<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For the past several years, I\u2019ve been urging seminar participants (and anyone else who will listen) to take the initiative in starting conversations with total strangers. It\u2019s something that comes naturally to me, but when I started getting questions about how to actually do it, I analyzed how I go about it. Some of it…<\/p>\n