You know I haven't always been the happy together and all round froody guy I currently am. Why I once had to resort to sarcasm for humour. There used to be a time when I was absolutely rubbish at conversation, and while I'm no expert or Casanova now I thought I would put down some of the things I learned/came up with years ago to try and help.
The first thing i did was to spend time looking and listening to the people who were popular/successful and try and work out what they did that I should emulate. Likewise look at others and try and work out what to avoid. This more than anything has been my guiding light. Oh, that and considering what kind of person I wanted to be.
The main lesson: It's all about the other person in the conversation. No-one likes someone who comes into a conversation with a "hey everyone, let's all talk about me" attitude. The key to doing this is most of all to listen to the other person and try and guess what they want to talk about. If you must talk about yourself, then try and only do so as an empathising technique.
That of course wasn't enough so I tried to plan in advance conversations to have with people if I needed to come up with something to stimulate the conversation. Think about the group you will be with in advance and if all else fails have some generic subjects to fall back on. Yes the traditional English ones of the weather and complaining about the latest Tax, Police event or even other pointless news story is always a good fallback.
Finally if all else fails, listen to them; most people when given someone who is paying them full attention and asking for more will try and fill the gap.
The result? Well it works for me, so much so that it has changed significantly who I am. YMMV.
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