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064 - Get People to Like You with this Simple System

Hello there, Kevin here with another episode of The Feel Good English Podcast, the podcast that is helping you to become a more fluent English speaker and a more fluent person.

And today we’re going to help you become more fluent with relationships.

Humans are naturally social animals but maybe you find it difficult to make close friends. Or maybe there is somebody at work our school that you would like to build a better relationship with, but something is just not right with this person and you guys don’t feel comfortable with each other.

Well in the book The Like Switch, a former FBI special Agent specializing in behavior analysis in recruiting spies, jack Shaffer is his name, talks about how to instantly read people and influence how they perceive you so you can make them like you more.

This could be used for sales calls, when going on a date, at a job interview.

The book Like Switch gives you some very interesting tips on how to connect better with people. And I’m going to go over a few of these ideas from the book in today’s episode.

I will also talk about some of the more advanced vocabulary that I used in today’s episode at the very end of the podcast.

And if you want transcripts to this and all other Feel Good English podcast episodes, go to feelgoodenglish.com and learn how to become a member.

Members get transcripts to all past and future episodes and you can also join us in the private Facebook group.

So if you’re interested after this, go over to feelgoodenglish.com and join us to get transcripts.

And without further delay let us get into The Like Switch. An Ex-FBI Agent’s Guide to Influencing, Attracting and Winning People Over, by Jack Schaefer.

Have you ever heard that expression “Just be yourself”? Probably and you know it’s a good thing to be yourself and stay true to yourself.

But at the author in his book says if you want people to like you, especially in the beginning you can’t always just be yourself. Why? Because when you first meet somebody, you want them to feel comfortable around you and sometimes you might have to change your behavior just a little bit.

And he gives you a formula called the friendship formula, the friendship formula is based on for things: Frequency, proximity, duration and intensity.

The first steps are to frequently be in proximity with the person you want to like you. People who share the same surroundings are more likely to be drawn to each other, to get attracted to each other. So try to be around the person that you want to win over as much as possible.

Make sure you are around this person more, invite them to lunch and a try to be around them. Now don’t be excessive and scare them away, but try to be around them more often and over time you guys will get to like each other more.

And if you want to be less obvious, you don’t necessarily have to invite to this person to places but just try to be in the same room or in the same area as them more often. If you notice they go to get coffee at a certain time, start doing it at the same time so they get to become more familiar with you and you become part of their day, even if it’s subconscious, but you become more familiar to them because it is important to frequently be in the proximity of them.

The other steps in the formula are duration and intensity. So duration is important; the more time you spend with somebody the more you will be able to influence them to like you. So that’s why if you can, go to lunch with them or have longer periods of time or maybe even have a meetings or something like that. This has been proven that the longer you are with somebody the better chance you have of them liking you.

The other part of this is intensity, meaning how well you are able to satisfy each other’s psychological or physical needs. And he talks about something called “Friend signals.”

And these can be just very basic messages two people exchange with each other just to signify that they know each other. So making eye contact or even nodding your head when you see somebody.

You know you see somebody in the hall you don’t really know them but you know who they are, you see them every day; you could call this person an acquaintance and you just kind of nod your head like “Hey there” or “Hi”.

Or maybe it is different in your culture, but just building this relationship through very small subtle friendship signals can work. So is that little head not do that to you give when that person walks by is more important than you thought.

And the next idea here the author calls “The golden rule of friendship”.

And this posits that if you want people to like you, you need to make them feel good about themselves. In fact this is central to all successful of relationships. But how does it work?

People tend to gravitate towards other people who make them happy because they want to give back the positive it feeling that that other person has given them. So the author talks about something called “empathetic statements” to keep the conversation revolving around the other person as opposed to yourself.

Have you ever known somebody who just always talks about them self?

It’s a little harder to be around this person. Well, it might actually even be harder to be around this person because they’re not making you feel important and we naturally want to feel important and we naturally want to know the other person gives a crap about us.

So make other people feel special. You can ask them empathetic statements and kind of repeat what they say. So somebody says, “I am not doing very well today.” So you make sure you focus on that. Say, “Oh, you are not having a good day, huh?’ And then ask them more questions about that, have the other person talk about themselves first.

And if you’re able to make the other person feel happier, they in turn will try to make you happy.

In the book the author uses this at the airport. The ticket agent was feeling bad, feeling low, so he made that ticket agent feel good and what happened? The ticket agent ended up giving him a first class ticket on the airplane. Interesting huh? I am excited to try this out.

And the last idea I am going to talk about here has to do with trying to get others and encouraging others to speak. And the author uses on acronym here called LOVE. Of course you know that word.

So the L stands for listen, the O, observe, the V, vocalize and the E, empathize. So how to encourage other people to speak more so as they can like you better.

So first listen but listen properly. You ever find yourself talking to somebody and you know the whole time you are talking all they want to do is express their opinion and reply back to you? They are not even listening to you; especially these days if they’re looking at their phone or something like that. That’s miserable.

And they know when they are being listened to or not so pay attention.

Make sure you get rid of distractions if you need to, maintain eye contact and look at them and don’t interrupt, interrupting is rude. Wait until they’re finished talking.

Sometimes this takes a little bit of self awareness you have to stop yourself from interrupting somebody and wait until they are done. Then you can even pause for a second or two after they are finished speaking, so you can process everything and really show them that you are listening to them.

Second, the O is observe, you need to observe the other person’s nonverbal signals and body language. If they are kind of distancing themselves or crossing their arms or holding their lips close together, these kinds of signals are a sign that they might not to be very comfortable around you.

So maybe stop talking about yourself, or maybe try to make them feel more comfortable. If they start to disengage, change the topic, talk about something else or ask them a question and make sure they physically look more open to you.

And the third part, the V is vocalize. How you vocalize the content of what you say influences how you make and keep friends. The tone of your voice if it is low, if you’re talking to a woman, “Hey, how are you?” You are trying to be romantic.

But if you are high pitched you are surprised, “Oh wow. Thank you very much!” So you can use these appropriately to convey your emotions and your message.

You might have to emphasize your tone a little bit. I personally me Kevin, sometimes maybe I speak a little big flat and the people might think I am not very interested. And it doesn’t mean I’m not interested, it’s just a natural way that I speak sometimes.

So for me I have to pay more attention to be able to vocalize and to emphasize a little bit even if it doesn’t seem that natural, but just to show a little more emotion when I am speaking.

And last the E is empathetic statements like we talked about the couple minutes ago. Let the other person know that you understand what is happening to them. You can say “I’m sorry, I know you are really busy.

That’s crazy, I don’t really know how you do it, that must be tough.” Or “You work with a lot of really bad employees, I am not sure how you are able to cope with that.”

So just saying statements that make the other person feel it that you understand where they are coming from.

So that will do it for today, The Like Switch by Jack Schafer; how to make friends, how to keep friends, how to win people over.

In business life and school, everything, we have to be able to make valuable relationships but some of us do it a lot easier than others.

But one thing you should be learning from The Feel Good Podcast is that we can learn just about anything. It just involves getting good ideas, learning from other people that have had success in that area and then taking action and applying those lessons to our own lives.

So if this resonated with you, you can go to feelgoodenglish.com/like and get the audior book for The Like Switch completely free.

Go deeper into this book because this short lesson is nothing compared to listening to the entire book. And if you go to feelgoodenglish.com/like you will find the book.

And because we were talking about being a good friend, how about a pirate joke?

Why are pirates mean? Because they just arrrrr!

See you in the next lesson.

At one minute and thirty seconds I used the phrasal verb “to go over”. I use that a lot. Why? Because I go over books and I summarize them, I talk about them.

So this phrasal verbal in this case is talking about summarizing information.

So I am going to go over this document.

“To win over” at two minutes and thirty seconds, another phrasal verbal.

To win somebody over, you often use it with a person, is to make them like you. If you win them over, you make them like you, you make them your friend or your fan.

So if you’re going to have a interview, you’re going to try to impress and win the manager or human resources person over.

Five minutes ten seconds, “To nod your head.” To nod your head is to move your head up and down, like you are saying yes. You know when you say yes? At least in a lot of countries. To nod your head is to move your head up on the down..

So if you see somebody in the street to that know, you might just to give them a head nod.

An “acquaintance”, big word. Acquaintances is when you know somebody but not well, you see them around, you say “Hello, but that’s it, it is a very superficial relationship. Somebody you don’t really talk to but you would say “Hi” to them when you see them. That is an acquaintance.

“To posit” a verb, “To posit”, at five minutes and forty five seconds is to suggest something or to give your idea on something. “I am going to posit that where I live is a beautiful city.”

“Give a crap.” Six minutes and thirty seconds. “I don’t give a crap.” Just another way to say I don’t give a s***, you don’t care it is not important to you. We normally would say it in the negative, “ I don’t give a crap”, I don’t care.

Ten minutes fifty five seconds, “To cope with” is to deal with something, to handle a problem, to take responsibility. At work, your boss says “Who is going to cope with this issue? You? Are you going to cope this issue? Are you going to take responsibility?”

And then an expression towards the end, “Understand where somebody is coming from.” Not literally where they are from, which city they are from, but said, “Hey man, I really understand where you are coming from.” That means you understand it their point of view, their perspective, you can relate to their perspective. So, “I know you are upset and I can really understand where you are coming from.”

Now go back listen to the episode again and learn deeply.

Bye bye you all.