шоу-бізнес у Києві part 2: how to get people to like you

Hello again guys, today I want to talk about one of the reasons why I had such a wonderful time on this shoot: I really liked all the people I worked with and without sounding too boastful, I think they enjoyed working with me too. I have been on shoots in the past where there was a toxic atmosphere but thankfully this time, I thought everyone was so nice to me and of course, this made the experience even more wonderful for me. The fact is when I got off the plane at Kiev Boryspil airport, I didn't know a single person on the project but I managed to make friends very quickly with the cast and the crew. In this post, I want to talk about the art of getting people to like you at work. Don't forget, you can always check out all the photos and videos I had posted from this trip to Kiev on my Instagram so here are six key factors on the topic. 

Step 1: Establish common ground 

The first thing to do when you meet someone for the first time under such circumstances is to try to establish common ground. To do this, you first need to ask a lot of questions about the other person, show plenty of interest in them. So in my case, this was easy: the first thing I did was to try to find out if they traveled to Kiev from another city/country for the project or if they were a local. I would also try to ascertain if they spoke another language apart from English and if it was possible for us to try to speak in another language as well. I know that the odds of actually finding someone with the exact same interests as myself is very low, but nonetheless, even in a worst case scenario: I meet someone whom I realize I have virtually nothing in common with called Ben - I then use the topic of "Ben" as the starting point after all, Ben is going to be interested in himself. You'll be amazed how big people's egos are: most people actually love talking about themselves and if you show interest in them, then at least you both have one thing in common. Thus in this case, both Ben and I have one thing in common: we're both interested in Ben. Would I ever be able to establish a solid and profound friendship with Ben if this is all we have in common? Let's get real, no way - that's never going to happen if we simply don't have enough in common but at the very least, this tactic would enable me to establish some rapport with him in the first instance. I also keep an open mind when I meet people like that whom I have nothing in common with: so I will pretend that I am participating in a piece of experimental immersive theatre or conducting my anthropology experiments!

Step 2: Avoid talking about yourself, but be open at the same time

A big mistake to avoid is to talk about yourself: the golden rule is to offer that information only when people show interest in you. So if someone asks you a question like, "what is your job?" or "do you have a pet?" Then feel free to volunteer as much information as you want about that topic. So allow me to share with you how one woman got this totally wrong - let's call her "Carrie" because she is from Hong Kong and her accent reminds me of Carrie Lam. She is a prime example of someone who is highly intelligent but lacks basic social skills. Carrie is an external consultant that my company works with a lot and so during a meeting this week, one colleague said, "hey Alex, tell Carrie what you were doing in Kiev last weekend." So I told her in a nutshell what I did in Kiev in like three sentences, short and sweet - if she wanted, she could ask me for more details. But Carrie did next was unreal, she then started telling us this story about how she once sang at an event in Hong Kong when she was much younger - she claimed that everyone at the event thought she was a professional because her voice was so incredible and how they gave her a standing ovation - she went into every minute detail, right down to the dress she was wearing that evening. Oh dear, Carrie just went on and on and on despite the fact that my colleague and I had lost interest in her story - but no, she remained oblivious to the way we were clearly bored. Carrie clearly enjoyed reliving what must have been a fun experience from her youth, but was she establishing rapport with me by saying, "you do some acting, me too, I used to be a singer when I was younger." No, she had misfired and totally failed to establish any rapport with me by assuming that I wanted to listen to her story that went on and on and on.

There is definitely a right balance to be struck when it comes to offering information about yourself - the trick is to offer some interesting detail and then allow the other party to respond, thus turning it into a proper conversation. So if Carrie had summarized her story in just two or three sentences, I could have then responded with questions like, "did you ever consider going into showbiz if you really had such a great voice? Did you prefer singing in English or Cantonese? Who are your favourite singers? Do you prefer singing something classical or pop music? What kind of music did you grow up listening to in Hong Kong?" That would have at least allowed me to feel more involved in that conversation and  she could have then reciprocated by trying to ask me some questions about what kind of music I liked  or if I enjoy singing. Then I'm sure we could have had a more cordial conversation about music if she had allowed me to participate in it that way but no - instead, I felt totally bored by Carrie going on and on and on, not giving me a chance to respond to anything she was saying. My colleague was equally wary of Carrie - he said that whilst she was absolutely brilliant in her area of expertise, holy shit this woman had no social skills when it came to the simple art of conversation. All she ever does is talk about herself whilst being totally oblivious to whether the other party is interested or not. So if you do want people to like you, then you must avoid making Carrie's mistake by talking too much about yourself. Maybe it's a cultural thing - I do think part there's definitely a strong correlation between her poor social skills and the fact that she's from Hong Kong. 

3. Be prepared to earn any friendship, don't something for nothing. 

The fact is I was respectful and friendly to Carrie in spite of her atrocious social skills because my relationship with her is strictly professional - she is not a personal friend but someone I have to work with. My company is paying me good money to put up with her poor social skills listen to her terribly long stories. I think there was an expectation on her part that because my company has chosen to work with her and use her services, that it somehow implies that we adore her as an individual and like her as a friend. There is a huge difference between demanding respect and genuinely earning it - whilst I've always been very critical about my father, it is quite incredible how he has managed to get away with it most of his life. When he worked as a primary school teacher, he demanded unconditional respect from his students and they were culturally conditioned to offer that to him (even if he was a really terrible teacher). Likewise, with my mother, I have never seen him do anything nice for her like even buy her a birthday present - no, his logic is he married her when no one else would and given her a family, thus in return he demands her unconditional devotion. Likewise with his children, he has never ever made any effort to try to be nice to his own children - his logic is that he has brought us up, given us a roof over our heads, fed us and paid our school fees etc, thus in return we have to offer unconditional respect. Most people from his former students to my mother to my two sisters actually do give him what he wants (most of the time anyway), but sadly he has no real friends because he does not understand the concept of earning someone's friendship. 

When I go to a very expensive restaurant, I would naturally expect to receive very good service during the meal and that's because I have paid a lot of money for someone to treat me like a VIP. However, the waiter who is very polite to me doesn't actually like me at all - rather, he is merely doing his job. Likewise, my sister is culturally conditioned to act in a respectful manner towards my father but does she actually love or like him? No, I don't think so - I genuinely have no idea how she puts up with his atrociously bad social skills, there is a good reason why I live eight time zones away from him and avoid him as much as possible. I don't actually hate my father, but sorry, I just can't deal with people with such awful social skills. I seek social interactions that will bring me love and joy rather than frustration and angst. My point is simple: you should never assume that people have any reason to like you but you need to give them a reason to like you - now that may be because you have proven to them that you have enough common ground with them that they will enjoy your company or maybe because you could prove to be a very useful contact to know (and hence you might be of great help to them in the future). It is so important to offer them that reason to like you in the first instance and so in Kiev, I had two things to offer my fellow actors - if they wanted to go sightseeing with me, I was happy to take them around as I have done my research on Kiev and I do speak Russian well (along with a little Ukrainian). Secondly, I do know a lot of people in the industry in London so if they ever want to consider working in London, I would be a useful contact to have. I am offering them something for free and giving them enough reasons to like me as I don't expect something for nothing. 

4. Remember facts about the people you've met. 

Have you ever been at a party or event where you're introduced to ten people at a time and you can only remember the names of about half of them? Yeah, that's because you're given a lot of information at one time and without a clear context associated with each individual person, it is pretty hard to retain that information associating a name to a face. Yeah imagine walking onto a film set where there are like 40 or even 50 people there, just trying to remember everyone's name is mission impossible. But when you do remember details about people, it usually impresses them and it shows you are taking an interest in them. So on the first day in Kiev when I met my Dutch colleague Aaron, he told me about an ad he had done in Amsterdam earlier this year and a few days later, when that came up in a conversation, I casually said, "oh yes, that was what you had to do for that mywheels.nl ad right?" It demonstrated to him that not only was I paying attention during our initial conversation but I genuinely took an interest in his work. It was a minor detail but it impressed him that I remembered it. Likewise, when a reader remembers a post I have done ages ago, it usually makes me very happy and that is really a far easier way to impress someone than to try to dazzle them with your impressive achievements. You would be amazed how many people simply fail to remember basic facts about people they have met for a simple reason: they're not interested enough in the other person to care so any information associated with that person simply slips through the net. It takes a certain amount of discipline to pay enough attention and retain all that information, if you really want to use that information to build rapport with them - by pressing the right buttons with them. 

I'm currently currently watching a German drama series Der Gleiche Himmel with my husband and he would constantly pause the film to ask me questions like, "who is this older man? How is he related to Lars in West Berlin? Where have we seen him before?" He usually wouldn't remember all the characters from the story and I would be the one who would have to explain how each character is related to the others and elements of the plot to him - it's not even as if any of that detail is lost in translation: we are watching it with English subtitles (which I am not using of course, given that I do speak German) but he simply found it hard to keep track of so many moving parts in a complex story - it's not like I have read the entire plot from the page on Wikipedia (no I don't want any spoilers) so I am dealing with the same amount of information as he has but somehow, I am able to remember a lot more about each individual character in the show. My conclusion from this is that I am actually far more interested in this German series than he is, otherwise he would have paid more attention. This is when I channel my inner Asian student - I've sat through so many lessons as a student when I am not really all that interested in the topic but I simply force myself to pay attention, take note and remember everything the teacher is saying. There is definitely an element of discipline to stay focused when absorbing a large volume of information in a short space of time and whether you're watching a movie, meeting people at an event or attending a lecture at school, you need to harness that same discipline to process and retain that information. My husband not paying enough attention to a TV programme is a simple example of how seemingly well-educated, intelligent people can allow information to slip through their fingers - it takes a genuine effort to retain all that information. 

5. Make others feel like they are a part of the team too. 

In this ad, I had to learn lines in Cambodian and it is actually not a language that I speak so I am merely remembering the words that the Cambodian language teacher has given me. I was one of the few characters in the ad who had lines, most of the others had just non-speaking parts. Whilst I was quite happy to simply do this task entirely on my own with just the help of the language teacher, two other members of the cast wanted to get involved and learn the lines with me as well. Someone who was more insecure would have asked them to back off just in case they did it better than me and the director would give them the lines instead but no, I was happy to invite them to learn the lines with me as I was curious to see how they coped but since they wanted to get involved, I wanted to make them feel like they were part of the team. Even though I was the one with the speaking part, the ultimate goal of the team was to give the client the best possible result and working together would help us achieve that goal together as a team. Did I actually need any extra help from them though? Not at all! Oh come on, modesty aside - I am a polyglot who can speak 25 languages already and even if Cambodian/Khmer wasn't one of the 25 languages that I speak, if anyone can learn a few sentences in Cambodian quickly, it would be me. So really, they were more like cheerleaders encouraging me and cheering me along rather than helping or teaching me per se but I didn't tell them that. Instead, I did the opposite: I told them that they had been awesome and without their help, I would have really struggled with the process and hence I am most grateful for their help. In return this helped establish team spirit and created a very conducive working environment within the group. 

6. Let's not forget the element of luck as well. 

When I got off that plane in Kiev airport, I didn't know a single person on the project but when I boarded that plane to come back home, I had made quite a few good friends on the project - I particularly got along extremely well with the two Dutch guys who were so amused by the fact that I speak Dutch and am a huge fan of a popular Dutch reality TV programme. I asked them, "am I the first non-Dutch person you've met who is a big fan of Wie Is De Mol?" They laughed and said, "I think you're the first non-Dutch person we've met who actually speaks Dutch." They felt so comfortable with me that they would speak to each other and to me in Dutch, whilst they only spoke in English in the presence of others so I felt like I was given "honorary Dutch status". I suppose it was plain luck that I ran into these two Dutch guys and got along so well with them - contrast that to the shoot I did in Hungary in 2016 when I really struggled to get along with some of the dancers on the shoot. I suppose it's a bit like showing up on the first day of school: you hope for the best but expect the worst when it comes to the people you find in your class. Yeah I can talk about social skills all night but really, luck plays such a big role to determine whether you're in a class full of nasty bullies and assholes or if you step into an environment full of kind people - well, this was really the latter for me in Kiev. There wasn't a single person I disliked there and I cannot ignore the role of luck here. I was extremely lucky in this case. It was a shame that this was such a short project because I really liked all the people I worked with in Kiev - I would have loved to spend more time with that team. 

Okay so that's it from me on this topic, what do you think? Do you have any tips for making friends very quickly with strangers you've just met at work? Have you ever been in a position like myself where you turn up for work on the first day and had to get to know everyone around you at work? Do you think I was lucky in Kiev, or could I take more credit for having made friends quickly with the people on the project? Please do leave a comment below, many thanks for reading.