I lucked out. Before one single exploratory probe into his activities or experiences looking for real material to spin real conversation around, he compared the weather at that moment with the weather last week in Peking!
“You were in Peking?” I asked.
Freeze the action on that frame; we’ll return to it.
Babe Ruth at bat delighted his fans by indicating with his hands not merely that he was going to send the next pitch over the outfield fence, but which segment of the outfield fence he intended to send the next pitch over. I could have told you the instant this man said “Peking” that I was going to leave that meeting with the business card of a man who would “do” for me at least as much as he’d do for his favorite brother-in-law.
First of all, when I asked him if he’d been in Peking, my “Peking” was exaggerated, punched up perhaps 25 or 30 percent more than the average party goer’s “Peking” would have been. I didn’t exaggerate it far enough to make him wonder, “Has this guy been in a hollow log for twenty-five years? Why is he so wiped out that I’ve been to Peking?” I carried it just far enough to let him know, “Hey, at last I’ve met someone who stands in proper awe of my recent journey; someone who knows Peking is not the same as Tokyo, Singapore, Djakarta, Manila, Bangkok, or even Taipei.”
Let’s get it right. There’s much to achieve in the world beyond going around it. The achievement of mere travel is not to be confused with winning a Nobel Prize, quarterbacking a team in the NFL, exposing a corrupt official and landing him behind bars, or staging a leveraged buyout and putting a million dollars in tax-free municipals before the age of twenty-five.
It is, however, an achievement. Travel, particularly big travel, is worth more reaction than we tend to accord it. Going to Europe is a big deal. Going to the Far East is a bigger deal. Going to a political science-celebrity place, like China or the Soviet Union, is a very big deal indeed.
So give a little! Don’t let his Peking-drop go down as though he’d just come back from London, or the Caribbean, or the corner grocery.
Showing the proper respect for his itinerary through my — inflection of the word “Peking” was the ball over the predesignated segment of the outfield fence. We intertwined like two long-lost lizards, not just over Chinese weather but over Chinese treatment of Americans, Chinese treatment of Chinese, Chinese motives for doing business with the West, Chinese ways of doing business with the West, factories in China, accommodations in China, politics in China, and how to handle Chinese menus when there’s no column A or column B.
I never came near the bottom of my legitimate pool of good questions. He never quit enjoying being asked. And I actually found myself enjoying the answers. Not everybody has had the experience of walking off a playing field triumphant. Conversation gives everybody that chance. The feeling after we’d spoken was identical to that of winning a high school wrestling match. I’d learned more about China. He’d found somebody who cared about his China experience. And we’d both teamed up and defeated the usual “Where are you from” bummers that pass for conversation like spray deodorant passes for hygiene.
He and I broke bread together.
He and I broke silence together.
He and I each has a new friend.
* * *
Was it Napoleon who said, “My right flank is collapsing. My left, flank is collapsing. I shall attack”? This technique must actually be tried to be savored. The mere description of it comes across as nothing but a pep talk.
There are moments when, if the genie popped out of a white wine bottle and offered you any wish, you’d wish for nothing more than a trapdoor right under your feet that would swallow you feet first and whisk you briskly out of that social situation.
Make a note. This will guarantee relief the next time you’re in one of those “trapdoor” situations where there is an absence of welcome conversation and an abundance of annoying conversation. You have nothing to ask those people. You have nothing to answer those people. You’re getting along like a slow waiter and a poor tipper.
That’s precisely the moment to strike.
Take aim at somebody and interview him!
Make a conscious, weight lifter’s effort to overcome that heavy feeling that this isn’t where you’d like to be and these aren’t the people you’d like to be talking to. Imagine an infusion of “Gee whiz” energizing you.
“Hey,” you should say to yourself, “what a setup. Here I am sharing fellowship with five other people, all of whom know more about something than I do. How good that they don’t seem too eager to draw knowledge from me—that gives me more time and license to draw knowledge from them!”
The first candidate for your coherent curiosity is, let’s say, a private security guard at the warehouses behind the train station.
What are your initial spontaneous and automatic thoughts? You wouldn’t want to be one. You wouldn’t want anyone dear to you to many one. You wouldn’t know what to say if you t ever found yourself in a fix where you had to make conversation with one.
You can do better. Pretend you’re a talk show host and the guest is “a member of a profession that has been whisked from the fringes of society and dumped in center stage by the new riptide of American dishonesty—the private security guard.” Imagine yourself saying something like that as you “introduce” him, after the opening commercials, and then start asking questions.
Don’t believe yourself if you think you have no questions. Let the “Gee whiz” of your childhood come roaring back to break the calcification of your adult boredom. You know good and well you have lots of questions to ask a private security guard at the warehouses behind the railroad station.
“Do you carry a gun?” “Have you ever had to use it?” “What training do you have?” “Is it an insult to call you a guard?” “Do you ever have false alarms caused by animals or hoboes?” “How do you fight the boredom?” “Do the police consider you a teammate or a rival?” “What’s in those warehouses, anyhow?” “Remember those war movies about sentries? The way to fool them was to throw a rock over their heads and go behind their backs when they ran over to investigate the noise on the other side. Are you conscious of ruses like that?” “Soldiers can theoretically be shot for sleeping on guard duty. What’s the worst your union will permit management to do to you if they should catch you dozing?” “Is the private security field a growth industry?” “Are new outfits gearing up as fast as demand?” “Are the thieves free-lancers or part of the mob?” “Are you aware you’re probably the only one in this whole room who can prove you’re of good character, after the checkout they must have done on you before they hired you!”
Interviewing the “sentry” obviously makes him feel good because (a) he’s never met anyone like you before who showed “genuine” concern about what he always considered his near-menial means of livelihood, and (b) the “interview” relationship is per se flattering. It says to the one being interviewed, “You have information. I want it. All your cooperation will be gratefully appreciated."
Encouraging the speaker also encourages you.
There’s a good feeling around and about when anything difficult seems to be going well. A conversation with a stranger at a party is no different. You feel a sense of control. You are “water in the lake”: When the lake is dry, the eye recoils from the sight of mud, stumps, gnarled vines, broken bottles, and rusty Illinois license plates. Add water, and all that ugliness is obscured. Instead you’ve got a “waterfront view” prized by all.
What comic book-reading kid didn’t envy Superman his ability to defeat criminals on his way to breakfast with one tiny display of his power? You get that feeling about yourself when you walk into what the host has warned you is a “tough crowd” and, instead of picking fights, pick conversations that move so well that other people begin to chime in with questions and comments of their own allowing you, Superman-fashion, to turn things over to the “panel” while you slip away to another group of floundering non communi
cators who need your help!
The encouragement of a stranger to talk is the sculpture of a new friend. You can finish that sculpture and polish it before parting company by use of the Command Performance and the Eternal Caption techniques.
Command Performance^ need not be confined to star sopranos invited to perform before the Queen. You can invite anybody you’ve met at the party to repeat anvthin&.he’s told you any time another friend or third party appears.
No barroom brawl has ever been started by someone saying, “Would you mind telling my friend here about the time you almost shot your boss your first night on the job down at the warehouse? That was hilarious!”
The Eternal Caption “officially” elevates whoever you want elevated. You may not have power to confer Congressional Medals of Honor, Nobel Prizes, Pulitzers, or even Ph.D.’s. You do, however—-by virtue of the authority vested in you as a member of the human race and a guest at the party—have the power to make someone feel part of a Mount Rushmore pantheon right up there with Greta Garbo, Mae West, Will Rogers, and Humphrey Bogart. They live forever over with the Eternal Captions of, respectively, “I want to be alone,” “Come up and see me sometime,” “All I know is what I read in the papers,” and “All right, Louis. Drop the gun.”
At party’s end, as you say good-bye, spell out the private security guard’s Eternal Caption for him. Let him know you enjoyed meeting and talking with him and will never forget what he told you—namely, “The biggest compliment in my business is when the thieves see you and decide to go hit some _other warehouse!”
Patients have been known to terminate years of psychotherapy after one validating lift from a stranger at a party who Assumed the Burden of making conversation and Encouraged the Speaker. Stakes need not be that earnest. All you want is a business card and a friendly hello if you ever call seeking a favor or cooperation in some common endeavor.
The highest marks for Encouraging the Speaker go to the clever hostage slated for execution who, showing no signs of fear, “interviewed” his captors and got them so involved in telling him all about their lives, their angers, their life-styles, and their aspirations that, though he saved his life, he prolonged his imprisonment because they liked him so much they hated to let him go!
Low marks can still be observed on the psyche of my beloved Aunt Margie who, when she moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, decided to make the effort of meeting the back-fence neighbor.
It looked easy. Margie and Alvin were young, attractive, well traveled, in an interesting business, and, of course, friendly and desirous of neighborly association.
One morning shortly after they moved in, Margie saw the woman working in her backyard and decided to make the move.
She grabbed a hoe and a trowel and went into her own backyard, taking up a position close enough to the fence to talk to the neighbor.
The talk went well from the “Will it rain?” phase through the “What is your name?” phase clear up to the “How do you like it here?” phase.
Margie, assuming nothing more than the permission implied by the woman’s friendliness so far, then said, “You know, it’d be fun to have you and your husband over for dinner some evening.”
“Oh, no,” said the neighbor, quite pleasantly but emphatically. “My husband doesn’t like to meet new people.”
I Need Your Advice
Thieves have been known to return lost wallets bulging with bills.
Sure, they want money. And they don’t care how they get it. But merely keeping a found wallet is too easy!
Asking someone’s advice as a means of winning him and getting him talking will, likewise, hurt some consciences for the same reason. It’s too easy.
“The heart is a lock,” goes the proverb. “You have to find the right key.” Asking for advice is a skeleton key. The jackpot overkill can be embarrassing.
Gunilla Knutson’s face and figure were admired by over a hundred million TV watchers who never tired of watching her beg us to “Take it off. Take it all off” in a Noxema commercial. Although at the time Ms. Knutson was officially the most desirable woman in America, she nonetheless interrupted her Saturday afternoon to keep an appointment with a young man in the Rainbow Room of New York’s Rockefeller Center. She didn’t know this man well. She wasn’t drawn to him physically or emotionally. She wasn’t being paid the fee that top models command, and there was no promise or hope that meeting him could in any way further her career.
How did he do it? He didn’t ask her for a date. He’d merely asked for her advice on how to approach, meet, hold the interest of, and “handle” exceptionally beautiful women.
When Tom Watson was head of IBM, the most powerful people in the business world were fighting for the privilege of having lunch with him. One day he disappointed crowds of important and importuning clients, colleagues, journalists, and stockholders and instructed his secretary to accept lunch with a mail room boy from another company who’d written him a sensitive letter telling how much he’d like to get out of the mail room and asking Mr. Watson if he’d mind having lunch with him to hear some of his business ideas and to give him his advice.
By the way, Watson accepted, despite the fact that in a postscript, the mail room boy had clearly stated that he didn’t even have enough money to invite Watson to a restaurant! He was, however, a whiz at making sandwiches, he wrote, and if Mr. Watson would merely tell his secretary what kind of sandwiches he was in the mood for along around ten o’clock that morning, he would prepare them, meet Mr. Watson outside IBM’s offices at noon, and lead the way to a quiet park bench he was fond of where the two of them could enjoy their sandwiches and talk.
The request for advice is seductive bait indeed.
And if America’s sex symbol supreme and most powerful businessman could be induced to contribute their time and knowledge by a simple plea for advice, you can see how likely that bait is to succeed for you when all you want is for that inarticulate recalcitrant at the party to smile, relax, let all those porcupine quills bristling out of him go limp and recede into their holsters—and start talking!
Asking for “advice” is a fascinating tactic; some say a secret weapon. Young politicians probably learn the power of advice even before young businesspeople. The young candidate running for public office for the first time obviously wants the endorsement and support of the established political celebrity, who’s probably a good deal older.
If the beginner calls and tells the older politician merely that he’d like to come see him, that’s annoyingly coy. If he says he’d like to come get his endorsement and support, that’s insensitive and infuriating. “May I take a few minutes of your time, please? I need your advice>”—that gets him in with genuine smiles. Then, of course, the young candidate starts with the big shot’s necktie and tries to work up to his neck. He tries to get the established politician’s endorsement and support. If that biggie has no conflicting commitment and figures to support the “kid” anyhow, he now does so with extra energy because the young man has dutifully played the game.
Advice can be a big defensive weapon in politics, too. When the biggie, in answer to appeals to meet, is heard saying, “Well, I’ll be happy to give you advice,” that means, “Look, kid, I know I was close to your grandfather, close to your father, and once upon a time close to you. Now, however, by virtue of some mysterious deals you may have read about in the papers, I’m close to your opponent—and if he loses, I’ll get indicted!”
Politics is not a perversion of life. Politics is such an accurate reflection of life, admittedly at times a chilling one, that some people can’t proceed comfortably unless they can find ways to pretend politics is a perversion.
Take the case of a brand-new candidate for Congress, let’s say, plotting a way to approach his state’s four-term incumbent senator, a member of the same party. Why should he play games and tiptoe gingerly through rituals of asking for “advice”? Don’t the congressional challenger and the senator belong, after all, to the
same party? Aren’t they ‘‘running mates,” on the “same ticket”?
Wouldn’t the senator normally and automatically endorse and support the congressional candidate anyhow?
Quite true—and quite naive!
This comes closer to the reason to make others talk than anything else.
We’re good at mapping the location of commitment. You’re right—the senator is quite automatically on the congressional candidate’s side. If you’re a performer, isn’t your agent on your side, and supposedly out hustling bigger and better career breaks for you? If you’re a passenger, isn’t your travel agent on your side, ever watchful for problems and opportunities that may afflict or enhance your vacation? If you’re an investor, isn’t your broker on your side, lean and resilient in pursuit of low-risk, high-yield situations?
Aren’t your parents on your side? Isn’t your spouse on your side?
Of course. Except for espionage and rare cases of treachery, everybody you “count” on your side is on your side. If you have a chart or a map, you may confidently list them as being undeniably on your side.
That’s location. We’re good at knowing that various allies are located on our side.
The trouble is, we fold the maps back up and put them away too early. Location is not enough. We need to know the intensity of those on our side.
The president of the company, when hospitalized, had the board of directors on his side. He could prove it. He could show the letter he got from the chairman of the board that stated, “I have been authorized by the board of directors to wish you a speedy recovery—by a vote of five to four!”
Asking for advice is one individual’s most dignified form of unconditional surrender to another.
Making People Talk Page 7