Impressions

I stood at a cocktail party once. Those were the days when business meetings could afford cocktails. I was in my late twenties, admittedly nervous and keen to make an impression. I knew no-one in the group of about 6 standing around me. I stood on the fringes for a while, listening, then kind of shuffled my feet subtly in order to move my way into this circle of clearly impressive people. After  3 or 4  minutes they seemed to accept my presence at least, though no-one looked at me. Then someone started talking about working from their new house in the south of France.

"Ahah !!" I thought, "A chance to get involved". I bided my time, letting each person elucidate where they would like to live and work from. My turn came, and though no-one knew me, there was a kind of social politeness that wanted to include me and give me a chance to have a say. Politeness or just tolerance I wasn’t sure, but here was my chance to make an impression.

So I blurted out, "We are thinking of moving our office onto a canal boat."

My next minute or so (whilst the group looked at me silently) was comprised of thinking ‘why on earth did I say that?’. The minute passed, it was probably only 10 seconds actually but I swear it felt like a long minute. Then someone struck up an entirely different topic and they became engaged with each other again. Of their own accord, my feet began to shuffle in reverse, and at last I found myself alone but free from the group, wondering whether it was possible to look more stupid than I had done.

I resolved from that moment to forget about trying to make an impression, as I was clearly no good at it. I then developed an alternative tactic which seems to have worked much better. I now concentrate on asking questions instead of making an impression.

I was told of a book by a traveller who decided to work their way through the U.S.A. and pick up a partner in as many bars as possible. I won’t tell you the gender of the traveller but leave that to your imagination. They reckon they found the formula eventually. The art to picking up a partner is .. get them to talk about themselves by asking questions. The traveller apparently recorded how frequently they heard ‘you know, you are the first person to understand me’ when in fact all they had done is ask questions and get the other person to talk.

Carl Rogers found out about this when he designed his ‘reflective counselling’ approach. By complete accident actually. His secretary was complaining about her husband’s drunken behaviour, and Carl didn’t have time to get involved in discussion. So as not to appear rude and ignore her, he just kept on saying back to her the last thing she said to him. “He came home drunk again” she would say. “Drunk again?” he would reflect. "I am really getting fed up with it all" she would complain. "You are fed up about it?" he would reply. After a couple of days of this the secretary said ‘Mr Rogers you have made me feel so much better’. He didn’t know what she was talking about so asked her, and gradually realised what he had been doing. Hence reflective counselling was born.

So if you want to make a good impression, forget all that posturing and preparation about what to say. Just go in there determined to get others to talk about themselves. Predominantly use questions. People will like you and the process is much less stressful than trying hard to impress.