The Mindset Mentor - 5 Tips to Mastering Conversations

Episode Date: July 22, 2021

These 5 tips will make you amazing in any conversation. Also, #4 will probably surprise you! :-) Sign up for my short Monday Mindset email here: http://mondayemail.com/ Follow me on IG here: https://www.instagram.com/robdialjr/ Want to learn more about Mindset Mentor+? For nearly nine years, the Mindset Mentor Podcast has guided you through life's ups and downs. Now, you can dive even deeper with Mindset Mentor Plus. Turn every podcast lesson into real-world results with detailed worksheets, journaling prompts, and a supportive community of like-minded people. Enjoy monthly live Q&A sessions with me, and all this for less than a dollar a day. If you’re committed to real, lasting change, this is for you.Join here 👉 www.mindsetmentor.com My first book that I’ve ever written is now available. It’s called LEVEL UP and It’s a step-by-step guide to go from where you are now, to where you want to be as fast as possible.📚If you want to order yours today, you can just head over to robdial.com/bookHere are some useful links for you… If you want access to a multitude of life advice, self development tips, and exclusive content daily that will help you improve your life, then you can follow me around the web at these links here:Instagram TikTokFacebookYoutube

Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. And if you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so that you never miss another podcast episode. And today is Thursday, which means it is the business edition of the Mindset Mentor, which means I am joined by my best friend and business partner, Dean DeVries. Dean, what's going on, buddy? It is an amazing Thursday. It's great to be with you. Great to be with all the listeners as well. It is great. And today we're going to be talking about how to master conversations. This is a huge skill. If you think about it, this is good for business. This is good for relationships. This is good for friendships. This is good for pretty much all of your life. And if you can

master this and what we're going to teach you today, you will absolutely be able to master conversations. And the secret that I want to bring in that we talk a lot about is presence. And when we say presence, we mean how present are you in a conversation with somebody? And you might think that you're very present with somebody, but I want everyone to be really honest right now. Give me an honest answer. What percentage of your conversations are you thinking about how to respond? Be honest about that. What percentage do you think that you're actually thinking about what to respond to that person before they actually finish? Yeah, that's very confronting. I was just thinking about what I was going to say next. Yeah. It's probably a big number, right? Like if you really think about that.

Yeah. And here's the deal. Like the reason why presence is so important is because if we're not present, where are we? We're either in the past or we're in the future. And you know, there's, there's nothing like showing up in the present moment. And if we really want to make the most of every situation, we have to be present. And to go with that example of whenever somebody's talking and you're thinking about what to say next, the truth is that people can feel that. Maybe not on the conscious level, but on the subconscious level, people pick up that vibe. level, but on the subconscious level, people pick up that vibe. Right. And, and we, there's many examples. And I know that everybody that's listening right now has at least one example of them feeling a certain way, even if they couldn't describe it about the way that somebody

was showing up in that conversation. There's like scientific evidence to suggest that everything that we, you know, like we're, we're constantly emitting, you know, energy waves from us and, and we're essentially big antennas for energy waves. And so when people have an experience of somebody where it's like, man, I can't put my finger on it, but something about them is just a little off. It's, it's a bad vibe. And so, you know, in, in a conversation, if you're not present on the subconscious level, even if people are, you know, even if it's not consciously a thought of like, Hey, they're not being present with me. People can feel that.

And, and on the opposite end of the spectrum, people can feel when you are actually really present. So I want to dive into what that looks like. Yeah. It's, it's not like they're walking away from a conversation with you and going, man, that person wasn't fully present. It's not that. It's just like they don't feel a connection with you like they could. And so today we're going to teach you how to be more present and how to have the other person feel that presence. And we're also going to talk about how to fully listen to somebody else. And we're going to give you some of the biggest tips that we have

for listening. And I know it doesn't sound sexy to be like, Ooh, I'm a good listener. This is sexy, but it's extremely important because that is the key to relationships. It's why they always say you're given two ears and one mouth. You're supposed to listen twice as much as you actually talk. So, uh, Dean has a really good story about this because he actually challenged himself back when he used to be a realtor to, to literally only ask questions to somebody and a listing appointment. Right. And how did that go for you? Yeah. So this was, I'll never forget this because it taught me so much. And by the way, going into that, the challenge was how can I have an entire listing presentation, which is essentially a sales conversation and, you know, you know,

selling myself on why I'm the best person to list their home. And the challenge was to do that and have a successful listing appointment and get a signed agreement without saying a single statement. So that was actually the challenge, not to actually say a single statement. So the only other option is to ask questions so i remember and by the way this might have been like the longest listing appointment i've ever had because we got so deep into a conversation um and when i say conversation is me just asking questions it's like an interview more than anything and so you know throughout this entire interview super nice guy um you know and i just started asking him questions about, hey, so what

are your goals? How long have you been here? What, you know, when you think about getting your home sold, what ultimately is that going to do for you? What does the next chapter look like? And just asking him all of these really important questions, but the challenge of not being able to make a single statement, it forced me to just like be really creative and like asking questions. And so I had to figure out, you know, what can I be curious about in each moment? And it actually took the, that was the first time where I really felt like I, it took the pressure off of me of thinking about what I need to say next, but instead just like receiving his answer and just asking another question, going deeper. And by the end of this conversation, I'll never forget this.

This is crazy. By the end of the conversation, he said, man, I really like you. He's like, I really appreciated this conversation. And you know what? You're the right guy for the job. I mean, like mind you, I did not tell this guy a single thing. He doesn't know how many houses I've sold. He doesn't know if I've ever even sold a house before.

And all I was doing was asking questions and you know, there were some takeaways that we're going to share on this episode of what I learned from that and the lessons that I've learned, I've just brought into that and maybe it, you know, every conversation, it could get a little awkward if it's just asking questions, but there's definitely some lessons I want to unpack about this. Cause I was really powerful. Yeah. So, you know, they always say the person who talks the most feels the conversation went the best. And so, you know, it's, it's really important to think about how you listen with

people, the questions that you ask, and how much presence you bring to every conversation. So we're going to give you five tips on how to be more present and create an amazing conversation with everybody. And so the first one is something that can be really awkward the first few times you do it. My old very first mentor that I had used to challenge me and say, Hey, listen, in order to, to try your listening skills, what I want you to do is I don't want you to say anything for three seconds after someone stops talking. That was, that was, that was a little bit less than three seconds. So when someone stops talking,

let them, let them have space. Don't just immediately feel like you have to say something. Here's why that's important is because a couple different things. Number one, they usually start talking again, which means that they will go from surface level to deeper, which means your conversation will have much more depth to it. It's going to have much more juice to it. And they're going to feel like they can open up to you more, which is obviously an important thing.

But a lot of times people don't tell you the whole story. They tell you a little bit of the story, but they don't either want to inconvenience you or they don't want to give you all the details. And sometimes when you give people space, they have the opportunity to just go a little bit further. And with the space, it gives them the opportunity to open up, to talk to you deeper. bit further. And with the space, it gives them the opportunity to open up, to talk to you deeper. And it's really interesting how much has not been said when you just give somebody three seconds, because they'll either keep going or there's just a little bit of space and a little bit of space allows them to think and be like, wow, this person's not talking. It's not awkward, but maybe they're actually

really listening and trying to take in what I just told them. Hey, this episode is brought to you by Four Sigmatic, a wellness company that's well known for its delicious mushroom coffee. Four Sigmatic's mushroom coffee is real organic, fair trade, single origin coffee with lion's mane mushrooms for productivity and chaga mushrooms for immune support. And I've been using it to start my day. I love the Four Sigmatic ground mushroom coffee with the lion's mane instead of just regular coffee. I feel like it helps me get stuff done. It helps me focus and it's amazing. And I feel an uptick in my productivity when I drink it. And mushroom coffee is easy on my gut as well. And it doesn't leave that awful jittery feeling

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Visit edmunds.com to see their best car rankings and search for vehicles near you. That's E-D-M-U-N-D-S. For cars, there's Edmunds. Yeah, most people have the experience of talking to somebody where there's a silence and maybe it's somebody knows the three second rule, or maybe they're truly waiting for, you know, some more expression. And, you know, the, the two things that come up for me in this is that,

you know, number one, the, the silence is such an amazing tool to use in conversation. And I look at silence as like the vacuum for expression. So if you really want, especially in a sales conversation, using silence as a way to bring out more expression, to your point, the person that talks the most feels like the conversation went the best. And so especially if you're in a sales conversation, getting the client or getting whoever you're talking to, to say more in the conversation is a really good sign that the conversation is going in the right direction. And the other thing that comes up is, you know,

people will sometimes feel like they need to fill the space, right? And that's why it's, it's the vacuum for expression. And so, you know, if, if there's people, if you've had an experience where you're talking to somebody and there's that awkward silence, just there's, there's innate, and it's crazy to think like how much, how uncomfortable people get in silence. Yeah. Right. That's a whole other, you know, whole other topic, but using the silence as, as the key for more expression is, is just huge. Yep. And one way to help, which goes into tip number two is if you,

if you want them to go deeper, if you feel like someone hasn't gone deep enough or you feel like there's more that they want to express, but they just don't know if they want any convenience to or they don't know if they're fully open up or whatever it might be. Tip number two is to just say the phrase, tell me more about that.

This right here is so simple, but I mean, in sales as well, this works really well. We teach this to people all of the time when we teach them in sales. If you don't know what to say, just tell somebody, tell me more about that. Allow them to go deeper. If you do know what to say, don't say it and just say, tell me more about that. Because what happens is it allows someone to go from, once again, from surface level to deeper.

And it allows them to express fully what it is that they want to say. Just use the phrase. If you want to hear more about something, if you want to just allow somebody to go deeper into something, just say the phrase, tell me more about that. Rob, tell me more about that. It's really good. It is good. And that's an example of how to use that is, you know, you don't want to be a robot and use that, you know, the same tonality, the same way, but like truly use that as a example of how to use that is, you know, you don't want to be a robot and you use that, you know,

the same tonality the same way, but like truly use that as a way of listening. Don't just use it as a strategy, right? Use it as a way to truly connect with the person that you're talking to. So take a moment, take the three seconds and like, Hmm, yeah, I'm receiving that, you know, and maybe not say like I'm receiving, although I do say that sometimes it's like, Hey, I'm receiving what you're saying. Tell me more about that. And so that's a totally appropriate way to respond to somebody, you know, to get some more expression. Yeah. Yeah. So tell me more about that. Another thing that you can use, which is tip three

is to ask more questions. The, there's a couple of points into this that I want to cover. there's a couple of points in this that I want to cover. The first thing is, you can also say, what else? That question just allows somebody to go deeper as well. So there's a couple of things.

Number one, it allows people to go deeper if you want to, to ask more questions because it's the way I teach journaling is you can literally sit there and you can ask yourself a question

and then you can answer it. But if you want to go deeper, go deeper and ask yourself a question about what you just answered. Right? And so the person who asks the most questions, or I'm sorry, and then you can answer it. But if you want to go deeper, go deeper and ask yourself a question about what you just answered, right? And so the person who asks the most questions, or I'm sorry, the person who asks the questions controls the conversation,

not the person who's talking, which is completely backwards than what most people would actually think. I control the conversation if I'm asking you questions and you're answering my questions. Most people think that if you're talking, you're controlling the conversation.

So there's a couple of things that are very important here. We don't need to really dive into the control aspect of it. If this was a sales conversation, we would talk about how to control the conversation, but simply asking somebody a question, like if we're in a sales conversation and Dean says, you know, ask me a question. My first thing is to do is to answer that question

and then ask them a question about something that's either on the same lines or the route that I want to go to then take control of that conversation. What's really interesting about it is I can control the conversation without you realizing it, but you still feel like the conversation went amazing because you were the person that was doing most of the talking. Yeah. I love this. Yeah. And the, if you just think about it logically, when you're asking the question, you're directing the focus, right? So when you're asking a question about like, Hey Rob, you know, what are your goals for this year? Well, now we just shifted to whatever we were talking about before to now what Rob's goals are for this year. So now just by me,

by very virtue of me asking the question, directing the focus of the conversation, you know, I'm, I have control over where we're going in this. And, you know, I think another point in this is, you know, using the art of questions to get to ultimately where you want to go. So like having, you know, having probing questions where it's like, Hey, Rob, what are your goals for this year? Cool. Why is that meaningful to you? Why is that important to you? So those are just some examples of probing questions that you can use to not only show that you're listening, but also to direct the conversation in a way that's really meaningful to whatever it is that, you know, whatever the relationship is, especially in a business sense or a sales, sales capacity, uh, to direct it in a way of, Hey, I want to understand if I'm working

with a client, I want to understand what their needs are. I want to understand what their goals are. Right. I want to understand what their, you know, what their, what their vision is and see how I can fit my product or service into supporting them and stepping into that. I love that. or service into supporting them and stepping into that. I love that. Definitely. So ask more questions is tip number three. Tip number four is an important one and it's to repeat back to them. So the same way that you said, I'm receiving that, that's a way of showing somebody that you are listening to them. Another way of showing somebody that you're listening to them as well is through your body language. So the point is to have somebody go, this person's listening to me because we've all been in a conversation before and you know, this person's not fully present.

You know, they're not paying attention. You know, they're thinking about something else. They're looking all around. Yeah, exactly. Arms are crossed. Exactly. And so, so you repeat back to them what it is that they just said in some sort of way. And you repeat it back to them, not telling them the entire story

if they're in the middle of a story, but like, oh yeah, I can completely understand why that situation with your husband can be really frustrating. That is going, oh shit, this person's listening to me, which is big. And the second thing is body language. This is something that's really interesting.

And when we were back in our early sales days, we used to have a lot of, we did a ton of recruiting and it was hard sales. It was not easy. And so just for some reason, there was a lot more guys than there was females. And we had a manager, Jeff, who was considered, and I should not consider, was the best at developing females. So he was a male that was really good at developing females. And he became my manager and I started asking him questions around it. And he's like, well, he's like, you've actually got to notice the difference in the way that, that males communicate versus way females communicate. And we got in this long conversation. He actually made me, didn't make me do it, but told me to

start watching females when they communicate with each other. Not like creepy, like looking around a corner and watching two women talk. But like if I'm in a coffee shop and I'm drinking coffee by myself, watch two women have a conversation. It's way different than the way that men have a conversation. This is super interesting for all of you guys to know. There was a study that was done years ago

of second graders where they had, they put a bunch of second graders into a room and it was just looked like a school room. And then on one of the walls though, it was just a two- a school school room and uh and then on one of the walls though it was just a two-sided mirror so people could see you know parents and researchers could see in the children had no idea they'd be watched and one of the interesting thing about about boys and this is how ingrained it is in us is that boys would sit facing the the front of the room and they would talk to each other and they would just turn their heads. The girls would literally turn their shoulders and line their shoulders up together. So they

would face each other face to face, even if at the front of the room was the board. And so that's one of the reasons why women a lot of times say to their husband or their spouse, the husband or the boyfriend, whatever it is, you're not listening to me. When guys can fully be listening is because they're actually not giving them the cues that they're listening. Head nods, responses. I understand my shoulders being lined up with your shoulders. So your body language and your repeating back to them allows them to understand, oh, this person's listening to me. Yeah. That's super interesting. Yeah, yeah. And I kind of, uh, the, the first question is why is that, you know, what, what about that type of expression feels more?

And I think the word that comes to mind is it probably feels more safe, you know, to express is because being face to face with somebody is a lot more vulnerable than just sitting kind of, you know, next to somebody, you know, shoulder to shoulder, and then just kind of peeking over to, you know, to say a couple of words. And the reason why they think this is, is because if you go back to the hunters and gatherers is that men would usually, it's not smart to be face to face because you're not looking out at the horizon to see potential threats or what you could possibly kill if you're a hunter. Right. But the females were usually around a campfire or they were holding their baby, talking to baby face to face.

And so it was just developed into us. So men out there, you should start actually noticing your cues that you're giving somebody or not giving somebody to actually let them know you're listening to them or they're picking up possibly that you're not listening to them as well. Yeah, that's super interesting. Yeah. So it's important to make sure now everyone's going to go to Starbucks and start watching, start watching women talk to each other. But if you watch women talk, women are really good at expressing that they are receiving

information. That's what's important to pay attention to. If you watch women talk, there's a lot of head nods. There's a lot of yeses. There's a lot of cues. How does that feel? And it's the reason why women feel more safe opening up to other women. A lot of times than they do to men is because not because there's a difference in the actual listening as let me rephrase that. It's not that, that, that the men are not hearing the women. It's that they don't feel heard because they're not getting the visual and auditory cues from them to know that they're being hurt. Yeah. Yeah. I think that goes perfectly into the next point is that people, you know, want to feel like you're listening. People want to feel like what they're, what

they're saying is being received. And so the last point on this is give up being interesting for being interested. Yeah. You'll get a lot further in any conversation and developing a relationship and a sales conversation. If you just focus on being interested and don't worry about being interesting, don't worry about showing how smart you are, how intellectual you're, the level of conversation you can have is, and just give that up and focus on being interested. Ask questions, use all of the, the. Use all the keys that we've shared so far. And that's going to deepen the relationship. And you could trust.

By the way, if you haven't done that, it could feel a little weird the first time that you use some of these intentions in a conversation. But when you just trust in it and do it, like my listing appointment story, I didn't know what was going to happen, but I was like, all right, here goes nothing. And it was one of the best conversations, one of the best connections, even though he didn't know anything about me, I feel like I really understood him and, um, and it developed a great relationship from that. Yeah. One of the, uh, back in our, our cut code days, there was a guy that was there that everybody loved and what he would, he would sit down with people he didn't know and he would go, hey, Dean, so what's your story?

And he would literally sit down with them and he didn't want to talk about himself. He was just so interested in learning about you and your life and where you came from. And he did this to me one time we first met. And he's like, so Rob, what's your story? I was like, oh shit, I gotta think about this. And then we started talking about it and we started talking about my

life and my business and how everything was going. And he actually didn't do this just to do it. It wasn't like a tactic that he used, but he actually cared to know who someone was, right? Like not just about like where their business is at and how much they're selling, but like cared to know their story of who they are, where they came from. And people could feel it. And people absolutely love this guy because his, you know, first impressions are big. The very first time that he had a conversation with him, it was like, this guy, I feel like he wants to know who I truly am. And he's giving me the space to express who I truly am without any judgment. And people loved him. And that's the perfect example of being interested versus caring to be interesting. So that's the three tips for, we have for you for being more

present and for listening better. I'm sorry, the five tips that we have for you for listening and being more present with people in every relationship. Number one, use a three second rule. Number two, ask, say, say the phrase, tell me more about that. Number three, simply just ask more questions. Number four, repeat back to them what they just said in some sort of way to confirm that you're listening. Use visual cues, auditory cues to show that you're listening,

head nods, yeses, all of that as well. And then trade being interesting for being interested. So that's what we got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories and tag us in it. Tag me in it, RobDialJr, R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. And Dean is KaizenDean, K-A-I-Z-E-N-D-E-A-N.

And we're gonna leave you the same way we leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make someone else's day better. I appreciate you. And I hope that you have an amazing day.