How To Engage Your Seatmate

Enjoyed the cast, great topic for career development

Two points come to mind regarding the valuable discussion and recommendations offered during this cast: 

1. The importance of smiling as the best way to establish immediate human connection - I can't be reminded enough about this point and know that I need to find ways to more effectively and frequently put it into practice.  Here's how it know that smiling is fundamental to positive human interaction and so important to effective relationships - it's really the only way I have at this time to know I'm communicating well with my 15 month-old daughter.  I smile at her, she smiles right back at me.  

2. I don't fly often, maybe once every month or two and being a high-C, don't seize on many opportunities to initiate a conversation, but some of the most enjoyable and memorable flights were those where I overcame my fears and had a wonderful conversation with the person sitting next to me.  Thinking about the potential of creating more of these rewarding experiences is reason enough to make even greater effort going forward.   The tools you offer will help greatly, especially the technique for ending a conversation politely.  

Thanks,

Mike

great example

 I liked the example with your daughter.  That's cute and a great illustration of how universal a smile is.

So Relevent

Thanks again for providing relevent and useful material on How To Engage Your Seatmate.  As a high-C, I would often return to work on my laptop at my airplane seat after saying a brief hello to my seat mate.  After listening to the podcast, I applied the techniques you've shared on my last 2 business trips.  As a result,  I met 2 interesting young men traveling from Israel to the USA, and a couple who run a ranch in Kansas, and a young person who 'follows the snow' from the US to Australia every year.  These brief and civil conversations did not translate into major business deals (and I wasn't expecting it to), but it humanized my own experience (and their's too, I venture to say), making the travel much more pleasant.    This became important more than once when the aircraft had to roller-coaster navigate through some very rough air.

I have been gently inquiring among my fellow business travelers of their habits along this line, and find that most of them completely avoid engaging their seatmate out of fear of not being able to politely disengage after a few moments of conversation.

Thank you again for providing the How-To's.  It is immediately useful, and impactful.

Adjust this method for every situation

This is an extremely effective way of starting a conversation on a plane and the pattern can be applied anywhere. Obviously it extremely important to smile and ask how the person is, but the real key to making this successful is the second question.

Asking a situation specific question on a plane, at a bar or conference, in the elevator, etc. quickly establishes a common ground between the participants and lowers the defenses people often put up when approached by a stranger. It says "I recognize you are in this situation and I am too. We share something in common." In other situations, you could say something like "Are you attending from out of town?" or "Are you a friend of (party host's name)?"

I advise all of my clients to use this method in a variety of scenarios and the success stories have been incredible. For anyone out there who has difficulty engaging others, make it your goal to initiate a conversation using a situation specific question the next time you are sharing a common space with someone. You will be pleased with the results.

Question

M&M, thanks for the great cast. Question :

Soemtimes you are lucky to be sitting next to big shots that you want to further relationship and make them part of the network. What is the best way to exchange business cards and other contacts details to keep in touch.