Understanding the motivations of others is a sure way to achieve your own ends. The world is full of potential win/win situations, but in order to discover them you need to be pretty good at finding out what other people are after.
The good news: people dramatically overcomplicate this process. It’s actually pretty simple. All you need to do is push the conversational slider all the way to the left.
Imagine that there’s a slider that controls your “conversational settings.” On the left side is “100% Absorption.” On the right-hand side is “100% Advocation.”
Most people keep that slider somewhere in the middle third of the range. In other words, most people tend to have some balance between paying attention to what information other people are trying to transmit and transmitting their own information. You want to hear their story, sure – but you really want to tell your story. And you want the other person or people to know how witty, charming, intelligent, or cool you are.
Most of us, in other words, use every second of conversation at least partially as a status-improving exercise, and this dramatically lowers our ability to learn anything.
So if you want to learn a lot about someone in a very short amount of time, simply set your conversational slider all the way to the left. Abandon entirely the idea of gaining any status yourself as part of this conversation – for ten minutes, just absorb. The other person will react almost immediately by setting their conversational slider all the way to the right, because they don’t have to jockey for it. You’re giving them the opening, and 99% of humans will take it every time.
And then what happens? Other people just talk and talk, and you get to learn.
You can find out all sorts of fascinating information this way. You can learn all sorts of facts and knowledge, but you’ll also get a keen understanding of the motivations and opinions of the speaker in extremely short order.
The other person might not walk away thinking you’re witty, charming, or cool – though they probably will think you’re kind and a good conversationalist – but you’ll walk away much, much smarter than you were.
Think about the people you spend a lot of time with – colleagues, clients, etc. What do they want? What motivates them? Most people can’t answer because they’ve never taken the ten minutes to do this, but doesn’t that seem silly? Isn’t this obviously beneficial information to have?
Give it a shot. Abandon status games for one conversation, say nothing about yourself, and do nothing but ask open-ended and general questions. Watch the information pour out.
The Opportunity Machine 