5 Conversation Habits of Truly Likable People

Be careful about how personal you go

I took French throughout my schooling, and something I heard again and again over the years was not to ask a French person what their job is. In France and around Europe, it’s considered an overly personal question, and topics like politics are considered a more neutral — and intellectual — conversation space. This probably comes out of the fact that in Europe, where class has a longer and perhaps more complicated history, your profession has historically been deeply attached to your social status, and your social status has been trenchantly difficult to change. Asking a profession, then, amounts to asking, “what’s your social status?” In America, where we like to think of class as something changeable and thus less defining, and where work has less historically inscribed relationship to class, we don’t lend the question so much weight.

Be honest

It can be tempting to slip into platitudes and white lies in an attempt to stay likable — a new study has shown that we associate a lot of fear with being honest, because we expect a negative reaction (and perhaps dislike) from our conversation partners as a result. But these fears are actually largely unfounded: People don’t usually have the negative reactions to honesty that we expect, and we end up feeling really great, too, after speaking up honestly.

The study notes two main kinds of honest talk that you can draw on for this: Give honest feedback (at work, this might mean some constructive criticism about a colleague’s performance), and answer personal questions honestly — if someone at a party asks you how you’re doing, answer with how you’re really feeling, even if that means saying something like, “Actually, I’m feeling really overwhelmed right now.” Then use the opportunity to follow up with a question about your conversation partner: “Have you ever felt like you were struggling to keep up with everything? How do you cope when you do?”

Leverage your body language

Smiling, making eye contact, and leaning in towards the person you are talking to all signify, without words, that you feel compassion and interest for what someone has to say. And as much as you want to be liked, the person you are speaking with wants to be liked as well. Making them feel special and heard will make them like and appreciate you, as well. We’ve all been in conversation with that disconcertingly charismatic person who looks at us so intently, so deeply, that we think we’re the only person who matters. You can use that person’s often wordless techniques. You may even find that you are that person yourself!