How to Make Them Feel That You’re Like “Family”

Have you ever been gabbing with a new acquaintance and, after a

few moments, you've said to yourself, "This person and I think

alike! We're on the same wavelength." It's a fabulous feeling, almost

like falling in love.

Lovers call it "chemistry." New friends talk of "instant rapport," and businesspeople say a "meeting of minds." Yet it's the

same magic, that sudden sense of warmth and closeness, that

strange sensation of "Wow, we were old friends at once!"

When we were children, making friends was easier. Most of

the kids we met grew up in the same town and so they were on our

wavelength. Then the years went by. We grew older. We moved

away. Our backgrounds, our experiences, our goals, our lifestyles

became diverse. Thus, we fell off each other's wavelengths.

Wouldn't it be great to have a magic surfboard to help you

hop right back on everybody's wavelength whenever you wanted?

Here it is, a linguistic device that gets you riding on high rapport

with everyone you meet. If you stand on a mountain cliff and

shout "hello-oh" across the valley, your identical "hello-oh" thunders back at you. I call the technique "Echoing" because, like the

mountain, you echo your conversation partner's precise words.

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How to Make Them

Feel That You're

Like "Family"

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Copyright 2003 by Leil Lowndes. Click Here for Terms of Use.

It All Started Across the Ocean

In many European countries, you'll hear five, ten, or more languages within the language. For example, in Italy, the Sicilians

from the south speak a dialect that seems like gobbledygook to

northern Italians. In an Italian restaurant, I once overheard a diner

discover his waiter was also from Udine, a town in northeastern

Italy where they speak the Friulano dialect. The diner stood up

and hugged the waiter like he was a long-lost brother. They started

babbling in a tongue that left the other Italian waiters shrugging.

In America we have dialects, too. We just aren't conscious of

them. In fact we have thousands of different words, depending on

our region, our job, our interests, and our upbringing. Once, when

traveling across the country, I tried to order a soda like a Coke or

7-Up in a highway diner. It took some explaining before the waitress understood I wanted what she called a "pop." Perhaps because

the English-speaking world is so large, Americans have a wider

choice of words for the same old stuff than any language I've

encountered.

Family members find themselves speaking alike. Friends use

the same words, and associates in a company or members in a club

talk alike. Everyone you meet will have his or her own language

that subliminally distinguishes them from outsiders. The words

are all English, but they vary from area to area, industry to industry, and even family to family.

The Linguistic Device That Says "We're

on the Same Wavelength"

When you want to give someone the subliminal feeling you're just

alike, use their words, not yours. Suppose you are selling a car to

a young mother who tells you she is concerned about safety

because she has a young "toddler." When explaining the safety feaHow to Make Them Feel That You're Like "Family" 177

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tures of the car, use her word. Don't use whatever word you call

your kids. Don't even say child-protection lock, which was in your

sales manual. Tell your prospect, "No toddler can open the window because of the driver's control device." Even call it a toddlerprotection lock. When Mom hears toddler coming from your lips,

she feels you are "family" because that's how all her relatives refer

to her little tyke. Suppose your prospect had said kid or infant.

Fine, echo any word she used. (Well, almost any word. If she'd

said my brat, you might want to pass on Echoing this time.)

Echoing at Parties

Let's say you are at a party. It's a huge bash with many different

types of people. You are first chatting with a lawyer who tells you

her profession is often maligned. When it comes your turn to speak,

say profession too. If you say job, it puts a subconscious barrier

between you.

Next you meet a construction worker who starts talking about

his job. Now you're in trouble if you say, "Well, in my profession

. . ." he'd think you were being hoity-toity.

After the lawyer and the construction worker, you talk to several freelancers—first a model, then a professional speaker, finally

a pop musician. All three of these folks will use different words for

their work. The model brags about her bookings. The professional

speaker might say bookings, but he is more apt to boast of his speaking engagements. A pop musician might say, "Yeah, man, I get a lot

of gigs." It's tough to memorize what they all call their work. Just

keep your ears open and echo their word after they say it.

Echoing goes beyond job names. For example if you are chatting with a boat owner and you call his boat an it, he labels you a

real landlubber. (He reverently refers to his beloved boat, of

course, as a she.) If you listen carefully, you hear language subtleties you never dreamed existed. Would you believe using the

wrong synonym for a seemingly uncomplicated word like have

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labels you a know-nothing in somebody else's world? For example, cat lovers purr about having cats. But horse people would say

owning horses. And fish folk don't own fish. They talk about keeping fish. Hey, no big deal. But if you use the wrong word, your

conversation partner will assume, correctly, that you are a stranger

in his or her hobbyland.

The Peril of Not Echoing

Sometimes you lose out by not Echoing. My friend Phil and I were

talking with several guests at a party. One woman proudly told

the group about the wonderful new ski chalet she had just purchased. She was looking forward to inviting her friends up to her

little chalet in the mountains.

"That's wonderful," said Phil, secretly hoping for an invitation. "Where exactly is your cabin?" KERPLUNK! There went

Phil's chances for an invitation to the lady's chalet.

I couldn't resist. After the conversation, I whispered to my

friend, "Phil, why did you insult that woman by calling her chalet

a cabin?" Phil scratched his head and said, "What do you mean

insult her? Cabin is a beautiful word. My family has a cabin in

Cape Cod and I grew up loving the word, the associations, the joy

of a cabin." (In other words, the connotations of cabin.) Well, fine,

Phil. The word cabin may be beautiful to you, but obviously the

skier preferred the word chalet.

Professional Echoing

In today's sales environment, customers expect salespeople to be

problem solvers, not just vendors. They feel you don't grasp their

industry's problems if you don't speak their language.

I have a friend, Penny, who sells office furniture. People in

publishing, advertising, broadcasting, and a few lawyers are among

her clients. Penny's sales manual says office furniture. However, she

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told me, if she used the word office with all of her clients, they'd

assume she knew nothing about their respective industries.

She told me her client, the purchasing officer in advertising,

talks about his advertising agency. Penny's publishing client says

publishing house. The lawyers talk about furniture for their firm,

and her radio clients use the word station instead of office. "Hey,"

Penny says, "it's their salt mine. They can call it whatever the heck

they please. And," she added, "if I want to make the sale, I'd better call it the same thing."

Echoing Is Politically Correct Insurance

Here's a quiz: You're talking with a pharmacist and you ask her,

"How long have you worked at the drugstore?" What's wrong with

that question?

Give up? It's the word drugstore. Pharmacists abhor the word

because it conjures up many industry problems. They're used to

hearing it from outsiders, but it's a tip-off that they are unaware

of, or insensitive to, their professional problems. They prefer

pharmacy.

180 How to Talk to Anyone

Technique #45

Echoing

Echoing is a simple linguistic technique that packs a

powerful wallop. Listen to the speaker's arbitrary choice

of nouns, verbs, prepositions, adjectives—and echo

them back. Hearing their words come out of your

mouth creates subliminal rapport. It makes them feel

you share their values, their attitudes, their interests,

their experiences.

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Recently, at a reception, I introduced one of my friends,

Susan, as a day-care worker. Afterward Susan begged, "Leil, puleeze do not call me a day-care worker. We're child-care workers."

Whoops! Time and recent history quickly make certain terms

archaic.

A group's intense preference for one word is not arbitrary. Certain jobs, minorities, and special-interest groups often have a history the public is not sensitive to. When that history has too much

pain attached to it, people invent another word that doesn't have

bitter connotations.

I have a dear friend, Leslie, who is in a wheelchair. She says

whenever anyone says the word handicapped, she cringes. Leslie

says it makes her feel less than whole. "We prefer you say person

with a disability." She then gave a moving explanation. "We people with disabilities are the same as every other able-bodied person. We say AB," she added. "ABs go through life with all the same

baggage we do. We just carry one extra piece, a disability."

It's simple. It's effective. To show respect and make people feel

close to you, Echo their words. It makes you a more sensitive communicator—and keeps you out of trouble every time.