How to Make People Like You In 90 Seconds Or Less
How to Make People Like You In 90 Seconds Or Less
The “secret” of success is not very hard to figure out. The better you are at connecting with other people, the better the quality of your life.
I first discovered the secrets of getting along with people during my career as a fashion and advertising photographer. Whether it was working with a single model for a page in Vogue or 400 people aboard a ship to promote a Norwegian cruise line, it was obvious that for me photography was more about clicking with people than about clicking with a camera. What's more, it didn't matter if the shoot was taking place in the lobby of the Ritz Hotel in San Francisco or a ramshackle hut on the side of a mountain in Africa: the principles for establishing rapport were universal.
For as long as I can remember, I have found it easy to get along with people. Could it be a gift? Is there such a thing as a natural talent for getting along with people, or is it something we learn along the way? And if it can be learned, can it be taught? I decided to find out.
I knew from 25 years of shooting still photographs for magazines all over the world that attitude and body language are paramount to creating a strong visual impressionmagazine ads have less than two seconds to capture the reader's attention. I was also aware that there was a way of using body language and voice tone to make perfect strangers feel comfortable and cooperative. My third realization was that a few well-chosen words could evoke expression, mood and action in almost any subject. With these insights under my belt, I decided to look a little deeper.
Why is it easier to get on with some people than with others? Why can I have an interesting conversation with a person I've just met, while someone else might dismiss that same person as boring or threatening? Clearly, something must be happening on a level beyond our conscious awareness, but what is it?
It was at this point in my quest that I came across the early work of Drs. Richard Bandler and John Grinder at UCLA in a subject with the unwieldy name of NeuroLinguistic Programming, NLP for short. Many of the things I had been doing intuitively as a photographer, these two men and their colleagues had documented and analyzed as “the art and science of personal excellence.” Among a fountain of new insights, they revealed that everyone has a “favorite sense.” Find this sense and you have the key to unlock a person's heart and mind.
As my new path became clearer, I set aside my cameras and resolved to focus on how people work on the inside as well as how they look on the outside. Over the next few years, I studied with Dr. Bandler in London and New York and earned a license as a Master Practitioner of NLP. I studied Irresistible Language Patterns in the United States, Canada and England, and delved into everything to do with the brain's part in human connectivity. I worked with actors, comedians and drama teachers in America and storytellers in Africa to adapt improvisational drills into exercises that enhance conversational skills.
Since then I have gone on to give seminars and talks all over the world, working with all kinds of groups and individuals from sales teams to teachers, from leaders of organizations who thought they knew it all to children so shy that people thought they were dim-witted. And one thing became very clear: making people like you in 90 seconds or less is a skill that can be taught to anyone in a natural, easy way.
Over and over I have been told, “Nick, this is amazing. Why don't you write it down?” Well, I listened, and I have. And here it is.
N.B.
like you, the welcome mat is out and a connection is yours for the making. Other people are your greatest resource. They give birth to you; they feed you, dress you, provide you with money, make you laugh and cry;
they comfort you, heal you, invest your money, service your car and bury you. We can't live without them. We can't even die without them.
Connecting is what our ancestors were doing thousands of years ago when they gathered around the fire to eat woolly mammoth steaks or stitch together the latest animal-hide fashions. It's what we do when we hold quilting bees, golf tournaments, conferences and yard sales; it underlies our cultural rituals from the serious to the frivolous, from weddings and funerals to Barbie Doll conventions and spaghetti-eating contests.
Even the most antisocial of artists and poets who spend long, cranky months painting in a studio or composing in a cubicle off their bedroom are usually hoping that through their creations they will eventually connect with the public. And connection lies at the very heart of those three pillars of our democratic civilization: government, religion and television. Yes, television. Given that you can discuss Friends or The X-Files with folks from Berlin to Brisbane, a case must be made for the tube's ability to help people connect all over the globe.
Thousands of people impact all aspects of our lives, be it the weatherman at the TV studio in a neighboring city, or the technician at a phone company across the continent, or the woman in Tobago who picks the mangoes for your fruit salad. Every day, wittingly or unwittingly, we make a myriad of connections with people around the world.