![\"Officer](\"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2017\/01\/Social-Briefing-Header.jpg\")
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Social Briefings<\/a> are short bi-monthly dispatches that offer practical tips to improve your social skills. <\/em>Read more on their raison d\u2019etre<\/em><\/a>.<\/em> <\/strong><\/p>\n When it comes to how much to disclose to someone new<\/a>, you generally want to match the intensity of the other person\u2019s revelations, and lead with positive disclosures about yourself.<\/p>\n But staying positive doesn\u2019t mean you should brag about all the great things you\u2019ve got going on.<\/p>\n When you\u2019re getting to know someone, it\u2019s natural to want them to really like you. It\u2019s also natural to feel that unless they know x, y, and z cool thing about you, they won\u2019t be as interested \u2014 they won\u2019t know you\u2019re as smart, unique, adventurous, or accomplished as you really are.<\/p>\n But trying to convey those great qualities and achievements too artificially and assertively can backfire, showing people that rather being cool and confident, you\u2019re actually insecure.<\/p>\n While it\u2019s common and even advisable to want to put your best foot forward and highlight your good qualities to those you meet, there\u2019s a wrong and right way of doing so.<\/p>\n When they interact with others, many people have what the authors of First Impressions<\/em><\/a> call a \u201cself-disclosure agenda\u201d \u2014 a set of favorable facts about their lives that they want to work into the conversation. I run marathons; I make six figures; I have a nice house; I volunteer in my community; I\u2019m a world traveler; I went to an Ivy League school; etc. Basically, \u201cI\u2019m a big deal\u201d in some shape or form. These kinds of accomplishments show status, and we all intuitively know that the higher one\u2019s status, the more attractive and compelling we are<\/a>.<\/p>\n But we also know that outright bragging is socially unacceptable. So, we go about trying to forward our self-disclosure agenda in subtler ways.<\/p>\n One such method is to ask a question largely to get the other person to ask you the same thing, thus creating an opening to share something interesting or laudable about yourself. For example, you intentionally ask someone, \u201cWhat did you do this weekend?\u201d because when they boomerang the question back, you get to say: \u201cOh, I helped out a homeless shelter.\u201d Or you ask, \u201cDid you play any sports in high school?\u201d so that after the other person replies and returns the question, you can say, \u201cI was the quarterback of the football team.\u201d<\/p>\n Another not-so-subtle way people forward their self-disclosure agenda is to add unnecessary details into their descriptions\/explanations of things. To the question \u201cDo you travel a lot for your job?\u201d, someone with a self-disclosure agenda might answer, \u201cI do. I\u2019ve been to Bali, London, Moscow, and Greenland just in the last 3 months. I\u2019m always being asked to meet with company CEOs around the world. I actually just met Richard Branson last week.\u201d<\/p>\n While it\u2019s possible to ask a \u201cboomerang question\u201d and add flattering details in a way that\u2019s subtle and doesn\u2019t register as covert bragging, oftentimes exactly what you\u2019re doing is both obvious and off-putting. It shows your insecurity, which diminishes the very status you were trying to demonstrate.<\/p>\n Rather than having a self-disclosure agenda, it\u2019s best to let yourself be discovered<\/em>. Things that people discover about you themselves always seem even more impressive than those which you share yourself. Indirect communication is powerful<\/a>, so instead of forcing your self-disclosure agenda, allow folks to \u201coverhear\u201d the great things about you.<\/p>\n You don\u2019t have to be completely passive in this process, however, and can subtly facilitate it in the following ways:<\/p>\n Show, rather than tell.<\/strong> Research shows you can<\/em> judge a book by its cover; even after short interactions, people are generally able to accurately gauge a person\u2019s personality and status based on external clues like body language and facial expressions \u2014 the way you walk, talk, dress, and hold yourself. So while you might feel it\u2019s necessary to verbalize who you are to a new acquaintance, you\u2019ve actually already been telegraphing that from the very moment you met.<\/p>\n If you\u2019ve got a lot of inner positive qualities, that\u2019s good news; it means you can rest easy, knowing that people will pick up on that fact without you explicitly saying so. (If you don\u2019t have a lot of good things going on in your life \u2014 work on that!)<\/p>\n That being said, even if you are objectively a great guy, it\u2019s possible to enhance your external body language and appearance to better reflect that reality, and to mitigate behaviors that contradict it and prevent people from getting an accurate perception of who you really are<\/a>.<\/p>\n The way you do that is simple: staying fit<\/a>, dressing snappier,<\/a> standing up straight<\/a>, conveying warm body language<\/a>, etc.<\/p>\n Use a wingman<\/strong>. There\u2019s a reason wingmen have become a social scene clich\u00e9 \u2014 they\u2019re effective. A wingman can surface the good things about you without you having to do it yourself. Will the audience know exactly what your buddy is doing? Probably, but it still sounds better than you bragging on yourself, and even when ladies know your wingman\u2019s sharing your highlight reel intentionally, that doesn\u2019t make it any less attractive or compelling.<\/p>\n Drop breadcrumbs<\/strong>. Sharing flattering details of your life isn\u2019t a bad thing, as long as you don\u2019t try to shoehorn them into spaces they don\u2019t belong. Be patient, and wait for a natural opening in the context of the conversation to share something about your accomplishments and positive qualities. Err on the side of sharing less over more; if people are curious, they can ask you for greater detail.<\/p>\n Drop little bread crumbs here and there, and people will eventually follow the trail to your best qualities and achievements.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Social Briefings are short bi-monthly dispatches that offer practical tips to improve your social skills. Read more on their raison d\u2019etre. When it comes to how much to disclose to someone new, you generally want to match the intensity of the other person\u2019s revelations, and lead with positive disclosures about yourself. But staying positive doesn\u2019t mean you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":62029,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42285,42293],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-65375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-relationships","category-social-skills"],"featured_image_urls":{"large":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2017\/01\/Social-Briefing-Header-538x280.jpg","reactor-320":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2017\/01\/Social-Briefing-Header-320x197.jpg","reactor-640":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2017\/01\/Social-Briefing-Header-640x394.jpg","aesop-tiny-cover":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2017\/01\/Social-Briefing-Header-400x246.jpg","aesop-character":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2017\/01\/Social-Briefing-Header-200x200.jpg","aesop-collection":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2017\/01\/Social-Briefing-Header-300x300.jpg","aesop-grid-image":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2017\/01\/Social-Briefing-Header-400x246.jpg"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65375"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65375\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":141717,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65375\/revisions\/141717"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65375"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=65375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Don\u2019t<\/em> Have a \u201cSelf-Disclosure Agenda\u201d<\/h3>\n
Do<\/em> Let Yourself Be Discovered<\/h3>\n