> without any particular agenda.

This is a very important part of learning how to have real conversations with people.

There is too much bad advice about using tricks or hacks to try to start friendly conversations with people. It’s refreshing to see someone learning that a key to healthy conversation is having selfless motives.

Something surprising about How to Win Friends and Influence People is that it’s not as manipulative as the title suggests. A key theme of the book is that you need to be genuine in your interactions. You can’t pretend to be interested in what other people say, you have to actually approach the conversation with interest.

People will see through hidden agendas and ulterior motives. The bad social advice tries to use too many tricks and hacks to formulate a set of interactions that sound good when you’re reading about them but have the wrong effect when you go into the world and interact with other people with a hidden agenda.

This is why I caution against all of the conversation hacks that are recommended, like coming up with excuses to ask someone for a favor (that you don’t really need) as a way to get them into a conversation or pretending to be interested in their life story when you’re only interested in getting someone to talk to you. Others will recognize when there are hidden agendas. It doesn’t set you up for success.