How 1 Conversation Got Me a 25% Raise: The Power of Conversational Skills

Written By Caroline Smith

One good, strong conversation has the potential to transform your life, both personally and professionally. When you lack basic conversational skills, you are missing so many potential friendships, relationships, business connections, and other connections that can get your foot in the door of a multitude of places.

As an introverted autistic person who used to struggle with severe social anxiety and social awkwardness for a large portion of my life, I know all too well how it feels to miss potential connections that you wanted to make because of a lack of social and communication skills.

In this episode, I explore how great conversational skills can be a catalyst for a brand new life, and I’ll even tell you the story of how I got my first pay raise of 25% from one conversation that lasted under 10 minutes in my career as a web developer. It’s true!

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Transcript:

Welcome to The Introverted Misfit Podcast with me, Caroline Smith, where we discuss topics related to the human experience of connection and communication with a slightly awkward, introverted twist.

Today’s podcast episode is about the power of conversational skills, and how just one good conversation has the potential to transform your life.

Picture this:

Scenario 1: You walk into a team meeting at work, and you and one other person are about 10 minutes earlier than everyone else.

Because both of you are too afraid to break the ice and have some small talk, you’re both just sitting in the awkward silence, staring at the ceiling, the floor, the wall, anything to keep from making eye contact with each other, just waiting for everyone else to show up.

Or worse, they try to break the ice by starting a conversation with you, but you are so shy and awkward that you just nod along and respond with one word phrases while your mind is racing because you just can’t find the right words to say, so then they leave the conversation wondering what in the world they must’ve done wrong that made you not want to talk to them.

Scenario 2: You’re at a social event, and you see someone – maybe a potential friend or someone you’re romantically interested in – that’s standing all alone, just like you are.

You keep trying to build up the courage to walk up to them and start a conversation, but your nerves have gotten the best of you, so instead you continue to spend the rest of the evening awkwardly staring at the floor and clutching your drink.

In both scenarios, the power of a simple conversation could’ve easily led to a connection of some kind, even if it was nothing more than a nice conversation that lifted your spirits and let other people know that you’re a pleasant person, but because you are shy, awkward, and don’t know how to have a conversation, this cycle of missing potential connections just keeps going with no end in sight.

Well, I’ve been in both of these scenarios and similar situations many times when I was dealing with social anxiety and innate social awkwardness.

Back when I was living in constant fear of social interactions, running away from any and every interaction that I could, I was blind to all of the opportunities I was missing because of my lack of conversational skills.

It wasn’t until I was on the other side of social anxiety and social ineptness that I realized just how many open doors I walked right past, all because I didn’t know how to talk to and connect with people.

What I’ve learned is that a conversation is the bridge between you and another person’s perception of you.

What I mean when I say that is people may see you or may have heard about you from others and have a certain perception of you based on that, but when they get to talk to and interact with you for themselves, that largely contributes to how their perception will either change or be confirmed, which can be a good thing or a bad thing.

SIDE NOTE: The other part that contributes to other people’s perception of you is your actions and whether or not they match up with your words, but that’s for a different conversation.

And when I use the word “conversation,” I’m not just referring to the words you say; I’m referring to your body language, your tone of voice, your facial expressions, and overall the way you carry yourself. It’s all important.

Let’s say for instance that you are a new employee somewhere, and an office bully has been spreading rumors about you out of spite during your first few days on the job.

Well, what is the best way for you to dispel those rumors? It’s to create real connections with people so that they know who you really are, part of which involves conversing with people and of course treating them with respect.

Or, let’s say that as someone who is shy and socially awkward, your social withdrawnness is mistaken for you being “anti-social” or maybe not a nice person to talk to, which makes people preemptively avoid you.

When you do finally decide to transform your reputation, that first conversation is going to be the catalyst for your transformation.

My Story from Shy, Awkward Employee to Getting a Raise!

I want to tell you about my own experience about how I went from being the socially anxious and awkward coworker and employee around the office who was scared to look people in the eye to eventually getting a salary increase and even getting invited to go on a company trip to Las Vegas for an annual conference – something I never would’ve thought I would be doing.

I was that employee that everyone pretty much knew not to talk to – not because I was mean, but because I gave off the impression that I was not interested in getting to know people.

I didn’t engage in friendly small talk, and I didn’t participate in office comradery.

In fact, I was so shy that after my first conference room meeting, my boss and the CEO of the company had to pull me aside and tell me in the nicest way possible that I needed to get some more confidence because people could barely hear me when I was speaking in the meeting.

It was so embarrassing to know that my shyness was actually bringing me more negative attention than if I had just spoken with some confidence.

What was even more frustrating for me was knowing that the perception of me around the office to those who didn’t know me was that of someone who just didn’t like them and didn’t want to talk to them, even though I knew that wasn’t the real reason – the real reason was that I was scared to talk to them because of my lack of social skills, but it hurt to know that the real reason doesn’t matter when people have their own assumptions about you.

What if I told you that all of that began to change for me with just one short conversation that lasted less than 10 minutes? I’m not joking! Here’s how it happened: 

While I was working my 9-5 as a web developer, I had started my online coaching business on the side, and the first aspect of my business was getting my website up and running, part of which involved me creating my blog.

I had written out 45 well-crafted and extensively researched articles, and after about 8 months of publishing them to my website, I had slowly seen the organic traffic increase to the blog, and consequently, I saw my email list grow.

I was so surprised to see that in just 8 months, I had gone from 0 clicks a month to about 4,000, and that’s not even the end of my SEO growth journey – I’m still waiting to see how much it can grow!

Well, as I was beginning to look at the company’s blogging SEO metrics, I noticed that they were terrible. They were only getting about 4 clicks from organic search engine traffic a month, which made no sense seeing as they were a software company whose entire business was online.

So I took the effort of looking closely at how the company’s blogging strategy could be improved, and when i had finally built up the courage to tell the CEO and VP of the company my ideas in a conversation that was less than 10 minutes, they told me they thought it was a good idea and that they would think about it.

Well, 6 months later, one of our current content creators left the company, and my boss had remembered my ideas that I had told him, and he told me he wanted me to write a few blog posts for a few months and see how things went.

It kind of snowballed from there because all of a sudden I started getting invited out to lunch with the higher-ups and I started getting pulled into more and more marketing meetings to talk about other potential ideas, and at that point, I really had no choice but to open up a little more and speak with more confidence.

Sure enough, about 8 months after I implemented my blogging and SEO strategy, we began to see a start increase in traffic!

They had seen my efforts, and not long after that, my boss emails me to tell me that after 3 years of being with the company, I was getting a salary increase of 25% because of my blogging and marketing efforts in addition to my web developer responsibilities.

I couldn’t believe it!

And what’s more, my boss asked to jump on a call with me because he wanted to invite me to go to an annual builder’s show in Las Vegas next year in 2025.

And that really surprised me! I went from being afraid to speak up in meetings to being trusted to speak with potential clients and demo our software product to them.

All from just one initial conversation where I confidently explained my ideas.

Now I admit, it wasn’t solely my conversational skills that got me to where I am today – I obviously had to walk the talk, but my point is no one would have ever known my ideas if I had not built up the courage to start the conversation, which by the way didn’t even start with me explaining my ideas – it started with some small talk about my boss’s recent vacation, and then I eventually led into my talking about my ideas.

The point I want to drive home is that when you don’t know how to have a basic conversation with someone, you are passing up so many potential connections and opportunities: friends, business connections, potential romantic partners, maybe even the love of your life, all because of a lack of conversational skills, because remember, a conversation is the bridge between you and another person’s perception of you.

But the good news is that not all hope is lost for you.

I remember being exactly where you are right now: nervous about going into public places and social events because of my fear of social interactions, and perpetually friendless because I just didn’t have the social and communication skills that it took to create and maintain relationships.

Because of me being on the autism spectrum, which essentially meant I was not born with social prowess, I’ve always felt like I was sitting on the sidelines, watching all of my peers play the game of human connection.

I wanted to play, but I couldn’t because I didn’t know the rules, and no one would tell me the rules.

This resulted in me battling social anxiety for almost a decade, and at one point it had gotten so bad that my counselor at the time was going to refer me to a psychiatrist to be medicated for it while I was in college!

I was living in fear for so long until one day, I had had enough of living my life in the cage that was my own mind, and I went on a journey of self-confidence, self-acceptance, and social confidence.

Now, I can finally say that I walk outside every day knowing that the thought of talking to people no longer scares me into hiding; in fact, I even find myself starting conversations with random people all the time!

If an introverted autistic woman like me can do it while still being my authentic, introverted self, you can do it, too, whether you’re autistic or not!

But it might be helpful for you to have some free resources and tools to take with you on your journey to becoming a socially confident introvert.

If so, you can check out all of my completely free resources on my website, including the downloadable PDFs like my free guide to small talk for introverts, my quickstart guide to becoming a socially confident introvert, my audio guide about 3 simple ways to start a conversation, and my content resources like my blog articles, podcast episodes, and more!

Conversational Skills for Introverts

Now that we know the power that just one conversation can have, I want to take some time to talk about this from an introvert’s perspective.

Sometimes as introverts, especially if you are more shy and maybe socially awkward, we have a tendency to stay in our own little box and rarely talk to people.

We think that because small talk is not something we particularly enjoy that we don’t need to be able to hold a light conversation, and we don’t need to know how to handle ourselves at a social event when necessary.

As someone who is an introverted deep thinker who enjoys deep discussions and is perfectly happy spending the majority of my time alone, the truth I’ve had to learn is that deep discussions and alone time have their time and place, but not every situation calls for that. 

As a result you have to know how to adapt when the time comes, and that means you need to have the ability to hold a conversation.

What does adapting even look like for introverts? In a nutshell, introversion and extroversion exist on a spectrum, which means that even though we may lean more one way on the spectrum, we still possess qualities of the other side within us, and we can choose which side of us we should embrace and utilize in the moment.

In other words, generally I am more of an introvert: I love my alone time, and lots of it; I enjoy deep conversations, even if I don’t necessarily have anything valuable to add and am just listening and learning; and large, overstimulating environments drain me pretty quickly and stress me out because of my sensory overload (that part has more to do with autism than introversion, but still).

But, because of my new marketing role in my 9-to-5 job and my role as a personal coach and an entrepreneur who owns my own business, there will inevitably be some times when I have to use the extroverted qualities that are within me.

I’m going to have to speak up in meetings, share my ideas, talk to people at networking events, engage in small talk once in a while, and come February 2025, I’ll be in Vegas having to really embrace my inner extrovert by talking to apparently hundreds of clients over the course of a week – I won’t even lie to you, I’m still kind of nervous about that, but I think I’ll be fine.

This advice about being adaptable isn’t specific to introverts, by the way.

I don’t know if you know this but certain extroverts who don’t know when it’s time to stop talking and listen also have to embrace their inner introvert by being quiet.

Leave a comment if you know an extrovert who could use that piece of advice, lol.

Don’t call anybody out by saying their name, but just put the side eye emoji.

I’m telling you, as a socially confident introvert, it’s such a relief to know that as an introvert, when you do want to hang out with your friends, share your ideas in workplace meetings, or make social connections, you can do it with ease and confidence, and when you’ve had enough, you can go right back into your introverted bubble and unwind, knowing that the relationships in your personal and professional lives are still being nurtured, all because you have mastered the art of conversation.

That’s really all I have to say about the power of conversational skills, and I really do think they can change your life.

If you are a shy, socially awkward introvert who could use some coaching to become more socially confident, even while being an introvert, head over to my website, the introvertedmisfit.com, where you can learn all about my 1-on-1 coaching services specifically for introverts, that includes my 60-Minute Social Confidence Booster which is a single coaching session where we can talk about anything that’s on your mind regarding your social confidence, and I offer that service to both men and women, and my signature 12-week program, Communicate With Quiet Confidence, which is specifically for shy and awkward introverted women who need more extensive coaching to overcome their shyness and social awkwardness.

That’s all for today’s episode!

As always, if you enjoyed this talk, please don’t forget to hit the follow or subscribe button, leave a review and/or comment whether you’re tuning in on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts from, and share this podcast with a friend.

Thanks for listening, and have a great day!

Connect With Caroline:

Free Guide to Small Talk for Introverts:

Receive my free guide that will help you master the art of engaging in small talk in just a few simple steps - without having to act extroverted!

Caroline Smith

Caroline is the founder of The Introverted Misfit, a community committed to helping socially inept people become more socially confident in themselves.

https://theintrovertedmisfit.com
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