How to enhance your vibe and make people want to interact with you

Discover practical tips and strategies to enhance your communication style and create a positive, engaging presence that attracts and connects with others.

May 25, 2024

For all the effort people put into learning communication skills, particularly verbal communication, there's a simple starting point I often see completely messed up.

Vibe.

How do you come across, and what is your audience's instinct-level experience of you?

Typically I've found that people mess this up because they're either optimising for the wrong thing or are not mindfully deciding what they want to optimise their vibe for.

If you want to be an excellent communicator, and generally apply good communication skills to succeeding in your interpersonal interactions, you need to decide what you're optimising for, and how you want your audience (whether it's an audience of 1 or 1000s) to experience you.

Are you optimising for efficiency? That's fine, and it doesn't mean you can't also be experienced as warm and friendly.

Are you optimising for establishing rapport? Great. It doesn't mean you can't also be experienced as being respectful of someone else's time and attention span.

There are other combinations and permutations of these things too, but the thing I notice that bugs me a lot is when people believe they are being respectful, productive and efficient, without realising that they are coming across as cold, clinical and having low emotional intelligence.

My advice - and to be frank, my request - is this:

Build your vibe - your personality and communication style - with a foundation of warmth by caring about the person or people you're speaking with more than you care about your message or task.
Then, upon that foundation, learn to be a ruthlessly efficient orator.
But never at the expense of that warmth.

If you have a tendency to waffle, over-explain, trip and slide into rants or diatribes with great momentum - fix this. No matter how passionate you are or how much you think you care, it will often come across as selfish and self-indulgent.

I am not by any means perfect, and I find myself slipping down this slide on occasion too. But it’s never too late to start sharpening your self-awareness, and there’s always room to sharpen it more.

Here’s the bottom line in advance…

Being a warm and pleasant person to speak with is nice.
Making your audience believe they are being listened to is fantastic.
Being able to say what you want to say with elegance and less words is incredible.

But being someone who consistently shows up with all of those characteristics together - that is a superpower!

How to audit and identify your current vibe

Start by reflecting on your most recent conversations, whether they were casual chats or important meetings. Think about how your audience responded—did they lean in with genuine interest or glaze over with indifference?

You’ll need a decent sample size to start seeing meaningful patterns.

If possible, ask for feedback from colleagues and friends who can offer an honest perspective on how your message landed in a particular interaction. Be open to hearing the truth, even if it stings a little.

These initial steps require humility but are crucial for gaining insights into the vibe you're currently putting out.

Then more specifically, observe your own patterns and tendencies.

Do you tend to dominate conversations, leaving little room for others to share their thoughts?
Do you find yourself trying to impress with eloquence but ending up on lengthy tangents?
Do scheduled meetings very often go over time, and the common factor is you?

Make a note of these behaviours (and others you can think of) and ask yourself what kind of impression they might be leaving behind. Sometimes, what we intend to communicate is great but gets tangled up in the delivery, and it's worth recognising the difference.

Additionally, pay attention to how your nonverbal cues might be influencing your message. Your posture, facial expressions, and gestures all contribute to the overall vibe you're giving off.

If your words are warm but your body language is closed or indifferent, your audience will likely sense a disconnect. Similarly, a rushed tone or nervous fidgeting might suggest you’re not fully engaged, even if your message is positive.

Finally, take note of your emotional state before, during and even after your interactions.

If you're feeling stressed, tired, or irritated, these emotions can seep into your communication style, even if you don't intend them to. By identifying how your internal state influences your external vibe, you'll be better equipped to recalibrate your approach and align your intentions with your audience's experience.

How to optimise your vibe (part 1)

Now that you've identified your current vibe, or at least started to, it’s time to start improving it. This involves making deliberate choices to enhance how you come across in your interactions, and it really can be a life-long practice to continuously improve.

There are several things you can do to optimise your vibe, and I’ll go into more in a part 2, but here are some invaluable starting points that have worked for me.

1. Be intentional with your energy and test your volume

The energy you bring into a conversation is infectious. If you approach interactions with enthusiasm and positivity, your audience is likely to mirror that energy. This does not mean you make your default personality loud, or rock up to a sombre occasion blowing trumpets and popping confetti.

But you know what, it’s extremely rare for me to meet someone I would advise to “turn it down”, and much more common for me to recommend someone that they “turn it up” to a point that they might think they’re being obnoxious.

It’s unfortunate that so many people have been told to keep their energy subdued so they don’t stand out offensively. It too often ends up crushing their assertiveness and confidence in social (work or otherwise) situations.

Here’s the thing - coming across shy, timid and quiet is not respectful or cool. Most people have no idea how to project their energy in a way that is clear and strong, and the root cause of this problem is that they have a deeply ingrained insecurity that they might end up being ‘too’ loud.

This is very much like going to a gym and only lifting light weights because you’re worried about becoming muscle-heavy like Arnold Schwarzenegger! If only it were that easy!

Test your ‘volume’. The worst that might happen is you’ll momentarily take it too far, and if you’ve been practicing auditing your vibe regularly at this point, you’ll figure out how to modulate.

And hey, nobody will remember those slightly-embarrassing moments in the long run because your impression on other people tends to average out over time. Just think about the impression you have of other people you’ve known for a while. How often do you base it on just one or two interactions, versus an average of all your interactions with them over a longer period of time?

And how often do you even think about people you’ve only met once or twice? Probably only the ones who made a great impression, or those who never invested in the things I’m writing about in this article and were particularly awkward.

Chances are you’re not that memorable.

In any case, taking control of the volume dial of your projected energy will require you figure out how to use it first, and that’ll require that you get comfortable playing around with it.

2. Master the art of listening

Just as you bring energy into a conversation, the way you listen can significantly impact your interactions and how you come across. Active listening isn't just about being quiet and letting the other person speak—it's about engaging with their words and showing that you value their input.

That said, I find the mainstream teaching and understanding of active listening extremely overrated and simplistic.

Here’s the thing—most people think they're good listeners, but often they are just waiting for their turn to speak. Then they hear about this concept of ‘active listening’ and believe if they are nodding along and occasionally making verbal gestures of acknowledgement, they are now suddenly fantastic listeners.

This is nonsense.

Real listening involves being fully present and responding in ways that show you are genuinely interested. In fact, not just responding in ways that show - but actually being genuinely interested.

If you nod and offer affirmations like “I see” or “That makes sense,” you signal that you are engaged. To an extent. Because vibe - as we’ve already discussed - is so much more than just the words you exchange; it's about the energy and focus you bring to the conversation. That’s what really influences how someone experiences you as a person.

The next level of this is about understanding their perspective and making them feel heard. When you show that you respect their views, even if you disagree, you build rapport and trust.

There are times when I will listen 100% silently and without any active non-verbal gestures that I am listening. When the person I’m speaking with has said what they’re saying, I’ll then acknowledge what they’ve said using their own vocabulary (especially for emotion words) as much as possible, and express empathy for the underlying emotion. Don’t try too hard to interpret or explain what they’re feeling in your own words; just communicate first that you heard what they said.

Here’s an example.

Someone says to you: "I'm really frustrated because the project deadlines for the new software rollout keep getting pushed back. My team has been working overtime to meet the original deadlines, and now they’re starting to lose motivation and trust in the process. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to keep everyone focused and optimistic when we don’t have a clear timeline."

You might respond with: "I hear you. You're feeling really frustrated because the deadlines for the new software rollout keep changing. Your team has been putting in a lot of overtime to meet the original deadlines, and now they're losing motivation and trust in the process. It must be incredibly challenging to keep everyone focused and optimistic without a clear timeline. That sounds like a really tough situation to manage."

Listening is a very nuanced art that has a much longer and steeper learning curve than most people think. And at a foundational level it has a lot to do with your ability to shut up the internal chatter in your own mind, be aware of your own biases, pay better attention to things around you in general, and work on resolving your own insecurities over a long period of time.

In the long run, your efforts to be a better listener will pay off massively. People will remember you as someone who makes them feel important and valued. And just like with energy projection, your listening skills will average out to create a positive impression over time.

If you’d like a great resource to dive deeper into listening in particular, here’s the one I wish I had created and is my go-to recommendation: Five Levels of Listening by Oscar Trimbolli.

Wrapping up

Enhancing your vibe is a continuous journey, and it's one that can profoundly impact both your personal and professional relationships. By being mindful of how you come across and deliberately working on these aspects, you can transform your interactions and leave a lasting positive impression on those around you.

That in turn can transform your entire life profoundly!

We've covered some foundational steps here, but there's so much more to explore. In part 2, I’ll share more techniques and strategies to further refine your communication style and maximise your impact.

In the meantime, I'd love to hear from you.

What are your experiences with vibe? Have you found any strategies particularly effective to improve your own, or seen someone transform how they come across?

Do you have any questions or requests for things to cover in part 2?

Share in the comments below – your input could be incredibly valuable to others on the same journey.

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