Tired of small talk? Want to move past surface-level chats and actually connect with people? Learn how to ask better questions that make people feel valued and eager to share. Patrick King shares specific techniques for deep conversations that work with anyone—the same approach talk show hosts use to keep audiences engaged. Master conversations by leading with genuine curiosity instead of scripts.

⏱ CHAPTERS
0:00 Intro
2:14 Two Methodologies for Deeper Connections
3:22 Fun Memories and Shared Interests
5:42 Unexpected Common Ground Through Questions
7:24 Ideal World Fantasies vs Realistic Goals
9:37 Digging Deep with Yourself and Others
11:16 Handy Acronyms for Conversation Topics
12:29 Importance of Being Curious About the Other Person
15:16 Elevating Energy Levels Through Interest
18:41 Cultivating a Mindset of Wonderment
20:58 Finding Common Ground and Shared Values

If you’re looking to enhance your social confidence and connect with people on a deeper level, then stay tuned! Patrick King shares tips on how to become more curious and genuinely interested in others, which is key for meaningful conversations and emotional connections. With his insights, you’ll learn to cultivate curiosity and adopt an engagement mindset that fosters wonder about people around you. Don’t miss out!

If you’re looking to upgrade your conversation skills and learn how to move past small talk with Patrick King, this channel is for you! From mastering meaningful conversations to building genuine connections through curiosity in conversations, we cover all the tips and tricks to help you connect with people on a deeper level. Join us to enhance your social confidence and engage in more engaging, emotional conversations every day.

If you’re looking to master conversations and move past small talk with Patrick King, you’ve come to the right place! Here at The Art of Charm, we dive into meaningful conversations that foster genuine connection and curiosity. From asking better questions to nailing those deep conversations, our tips will help you feel more confident in any social setting. Join us and learn how to connect with anyone by tapping into your natural curiosity—just like a talk show host!

Most people think they’re bad at conversation.
They’re not.
They just don’t know what to ask.
There are two acronyms in Patrick King’s Improve Your People skills book that basically hand you a map for any conversation, deep or shallow.
And there’s a separate skill underneath both of them that almost nobody talks about.
being genuinely curious on command, even about people who bore you at first.
Today, I’m pulling both from the same book because they’re really the same skill from two different angles.
The first excerpt comes from Improve Your People’s Skills, Patrick King’s book on building real relationships instead of just surviving small talk.
Two pieces of it pair up really well.
First, there’s a chapter that gives you two acronyms, ORCA, O-R-C-A, and FORD, F-O-R-D.
They’re basically categories of questions to reach for when conversations going nowhere.
Second, there’s an earlier chapter in the same book about curiosity, specifically how people like talk show hosts manage to make every guest feel like the most interesting person alive, and how you can actually train that same skill within yourself.
One’s the toolkit, one’s the mindset behind using that toolkit well.
We’ll go through the toolkit first, and then the mindset.
Okay, so we know and understand that we should dig deep and ask better questions because that’s what automatically categorizes you on a higher tier of friendship.
But what topics can we actually use as shovels for digging?
What if we can’t think of things to say?
So we resort to talking about the weather, the commute, or other daily mundanities.
In this section, we’ll discuss two acronyms that will help your digging and people skills flourish, Orca and Ford.
There is some overlap, but in the end, you’ll have two different methodologies for what to engage people on for deeper connections.
Enter Orca.
Orca stands for origins, recreation, career, and aspirations.
Origin questions ask about where a person comes from.
Where’d you go to school?
Where were you born?
Where did you grow up?
These are wear-based questions.
They’ll often get a brief response, but you can get people to elaborate by asking what those places were like and what they thought about them.
If you recognize or have been to where they’re from, that’s even better.
You’ve found common ground and you can share your own experience while asking if theirs was similar or different.
You can also ask for details about people’s backgrounds.
Did you like school growing up?
How were you as a child?
Did you get into any trouble?
Anything that helps people open up by talking about where they came from falls into the origins category of orca.
This line of questioning is great because most people have fun memories they like reliving and sharing with others.
Find out how people got from point A to point B, where point B is the person you are currently talking with.
Recreation questions ask people what they do for fun.
Do you have any hobbies?
What do you do in your spare time?
Do you have any hidden talents?
Have you been watching any shows lately?
Read any good books recently?
What do you want to do in your spare time?
Often people are eager to talk about the things they do for fun, and if you discover something you both enjoy, you can gush together.
If you have no experience of the other person’s hobbies, you can always ask them about what they enjoy, or if they have any tips for novices of a sport or hobby they enjoy.
Career questions encourage people to talk about their professions.
What do you do is a standard opening question as the majority of people work for a living and can talk for some time about the joys and pitfalls of their career.
This line of questioning allows for several follow-up questions.
How did you get into that?
How much school does that require?
Do you like your job?
Where do you want to go with it?
What are the best and worst parts?
And of course, you can always ask for details about anything they mention about their job.
Aspirations, the A in Orca, asks people to talk about their hopes and dreams.
If you could travel anywhere, where would you go?
If you could meet any historical figure, who would it be and why?
Do you ever wish you could live on a sailboat?
If you could be anywhere, where would you want to be?
If you could do anything for a living, what would you choose?
If you won the lottery, what would you do?
What do you want to be doing at age 60?
The questions you can ask to learn about people’s hopes are endless.
And once you know what people dream about, you can share your dreams and compare and contrast with their aspirations.
You might find unexpected common ground even when your specific answers differ.
The other acronym to help you remember questions to ask is FORD, family, occupation, recreation, and dreams.
Family questions let people open up about something almost all humans share, family.
Everyone loves to be asked about their kids and grandkids, and childless people love to talk about their pets in a similar manner.
Fawning over the adorable antics of the innocent is always enjoyable, but it’s equally interesting when people don’t have kids or pets.
That leaves it open for you to ask why.
Asking about significant others can bring a lot of material to the table as well.
Asking about parents or grandparents can be fun too, but it’s best to do when a specific context comes up.
Did your mother teach you to cook?
Is a fair question to ask at a dinner party, for example.
Regardless of the answer, interesting stories could be unearthed.
Our families have enormous influence on us, and to not understand people’s familial relationships is to barely understand them at all.
All of Ford’s other letters have their analogs in Orca.
O is occupation, a counterpart to Orca’s career, and R is recreation, which Orca shares wholesale.
D is dreams, another word for Orca’s aspirations, but you can see dreams as more abstract and fantastical to differentiate the two slightly.
What do you want to happen in an ideal world and what do you fantasize about versus realistic goals and hopes and aspirations?
It’s good to remember one or the other, then add family to Orca or origins to Ford.
Whatever acronym or combination of the two makes the most sense to you is the one that’s best.
Digging deep has never been so effortless because you’re making it easy for your conversation partner.
Yes, it’s finally your turn to take control of the interaction to make people feel your presence.
You have the power to create an interaction that people will remember.
It starts with digging deep strategically and then knowing the most common topics that people can connect and resonate with.
Takeaways
The words that come out of your mouth should almost never be your priority.
In fact, as the chapter order reflects, it is priority number three, though perhaps priority number four in improving your people skills.
Having the other two components is necessary to set yourself up for success.
When it comes to actual conversations, the value of digging deep can’t be overstated.
Digging deep is really the act of forging friendships and building deeper relationships.
This is how you move past being an acquaintance and gain access to people’s inner circles.
The first means to digging deep is to reveal more details about yourself.
Someone has to act first and it might as well be you.
The reality is that you’re probably not sharing much while expecting others to pour their hearts out for you, so make a rule of sharing three details in every applicable response.
This gives you a greater chance of finding similarities, which are easy to bond over.
In particular, share emotions, vulnerabilities, and stories from your life.
While you share more about yourself, it’s imperative to learn how to ask better questions of people.
This way, you’re digging deep with yourself and with others, showing your true self and knowing how to get them to reciprocate.
A few insights include asking open-ended questions, getting behind assumptions, getting the full story or multiple perspectives, always following up, getting comfortable with silence, and trying to help people find their own insights.
Finally, even though great questions create great responses, it can be exhausting and exhaustive.
Sometimes we must turn to externalities, topics that are about neither you nor the other person.
This is helpful in two main ways.
This allows you to indirectly probe and learn about others.
Asking directly sometimes causes people to clam up or otherwise provide guarded answers.
When you measure people’s responses to external topics, you can gain greater insight into them just by understanding the values and perspectives involved in those responses.
Just in case you’re still puzzled by what to actually talk about, there are two handy acronyms that can give you a helpful reminder when your mind runs blank.
Orca and Ford.
So that’s straight from chapter three of the book, and the link is down below if you want the full breakdown.
But here’s what you actually do with Orca and Ford.
Don’t try to memorize both.
Just keep one in your back pocket for different situations.
Ford is a safe default.
Family, occupation, recreation, dreams.
That’s basically networking events, small talk, and it works because everyone has an answer ready.
Orca you can reach for when you actually want to go somewhere real.
Obstacles.
Realizations.
Challenges.
Achievements.
Ask someone about an obstacle they’ve faced instead of what they do for work and watch the whole energy of the conversation change.
Now a quick thing if you’re new here, this channel breaks down books like this one, one piece at a time.
So if that’s useful, please hit subscribe and I’ll see you in the next one too.
Here’s the thing though, knowing the categories isn’t the hard part.
The hard part is actually caring about the answer once you ask.
And that’s exactly what the next section is about.
Because Patrick King’s got a whole chapter on how to fake or honestly build real curiosity about people you don’t naturally find interesting yet.
Aside from uncovering people’s assumptions, curiosity plays a huge role in the way we receive others and thus how they receive us.
You can be the most charming, funniest person in the room, but if you aren’t interested and curious about the person across from you, there simply won’t be a connection.
It turns out that we care if the person across from us is engaged or scanning the room behind us and looking for someone better to talk to.
Staying curious is a difficult proposition because at first glance, most people might seem uninteresting or unworthy of paying attention to.
This is undoubtedly the biggest hurdle for most of us.
Even if you don’t consciously think it, you subconsciously believe that someone is not worth being curious about.
You think that even if you dig deeper, you won’t find anything worth your time, so why bother in the first place?
It’s true that at first glance, very few of us are compelling.
You included, but acting on this impulse will limit your communication and keep you right where you are.
We’re cutting off people’s ability to be interesting and compelling because we don’t give them a chance, just like the Pygmalion effect dictates.
In the end, it doesn’t particularly matter what you believe.
Just start to build the habit of curiosity, and eventually, it won’t matter if you think people are worthy or not.
They are.
You’ll be able to find the interesting aspects in just about anyone.
To do so, I’ve found that the absolute best mindset to emulate is that of a talk show host.
Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Conan O’Brien, whoever your favorite is, they all do the same thing.
Just ask yourself, what would they do if you’re struggling for what Curiosity looks like and how you can wield it?
Conan O’Brien happens to be my favorite.
So let’s think about the traits he embodies in a conversation with a guest on his show.
Visualize his studio.
He’s got a big open space and he’s seated at a desk.
His guest is seated at a chair adjacent to the desk and it’s literally like they exist in a world of their own.
When Conan has a guest on his show, this guest is the center of his world for the next 10 minutes.
They are the most interesting person he’s ever come across, everything they say is spellbinding.
He is insatiably curious about their stories, and he reacts to anything they say with an uproarious laugh and an otherwise exaggerated reaction that they were seeking.
He is charmingly positive and can always find a humorous spin on a negative aspect of a story.
His sole purpose is to make his guests comfortable on the show, encourage them to talk about themselves, and, ultimately, make them feel good and look good.
In turn, this makes them share revealing things they might not otherwise share and create a connection and chemistry with him that is so important for a talk show.
The viewers at home are desperate to learn about this celebrity guest, so Conan acts as a proxy for their curiosity.
Also, the viewers can tell in an instant if either party is mailing it in or faking it, so Conan’s job literally depends on his ability to use his curiosity to connect on a deeper level.
Even with grumpy or more quiet guests, he is able to elevate their energy levels and attitudes simply by being intensely interested in them at an energy level slightly above theirs and encouraging them by giving them the great reactions that they seek.
It’s almost as if he plays the game.
How little can I say to get the most out of people?
Of course, in your life, this equates to those people you come across that are like pulling teeth to talk to.
A little bit of friendly encouragement and affirmation can make even the meekest clam open up.
Numerous questions directing the conversation toward them and the feeling that you actually care are also integral.
Imagine the relief you can create at dreaded networking events.
People like those who like them, so when you react the way they want, it encourages them to be more outgoing and open with you.
Other talk show hosts would later go on the record lamenting how often they disliked his guests and how boring he found the actors and actresses that he would be forced to speak to.
But that’s a testament to how highly trained his habit of curiosity was.
He started by making a conscious decision to be curious, built the habit, and engaged his guests easily.
Do you think his guests could tell if he was interested or not?
Never.
Curiosity allows people to feel comfortable enough to speak freely beyond a superficial level because you’re demonstrating that you care and that you will listen when they open up.
People won’t be inclined to reveal their secret thoughts if they think it will be met with apathy after all.
So, whether you have to fake it till you make it, Conan O’Brien is who your mindset and attitude should feel like.
It’s a banal and often used quote, but for good reason.
Dale Carnegie said it best, you can make more friends in two months by becoming truly interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.
In case Conan O’Brien’s curiosity still isn’t coming naturally to you, here are some more specific patterns of thought you can use to improve your people’s skills.
I wonder what they are like.
When you start to wonder about the other person, it changes your perspective on them completely.
This is an inkling of curiosity.
You start to care about them.
not only about their shallow traits such as their occupation or how their day is going, but what motivates them and what makes them act in the way they do.
Having a sense of wonder about someone is one of the most powerful mindsets you can have because it makes you want to scratch your itch.
Scratching the itch of curiosity will become secondary to everything else because you simply want to know about the other person.
Suppose you had a sense of wonder about computers as a child.
You were probably irritating with how many questions you asked anyone that seemed to have knowledge about computers.
What kind of attention span are you going to devote to computers?
And what kind of questions are you going to ask?
You’re going to skip the small talk interview questions and get right down to the details because it’s what you care and wonder about.
Keeping the mindset of wonderment will completely change the way you interact with people because you will suddenly care.
And much of the time, we don’t notice that we don’t care about the person we’re talking to.
You’ll dig deeper and deeper until you can put together a picture of what you’re wondering about.
What can they teach me?
Don’t read this from the perspective of attempting to gain what you can from someone.
Read it from the perspective of seeing others as being people worthy of your attention.
Everyone has valuable knowledge, whether it applies to your life or not.
Everyone is great at something, and everyone is a domain expert in something that you are not, no matter how small or obscure.
The main point is to ignite an interest in the other person, as opposed to an apathetic approach.
Imagine if you were a huge skiing junkie, and you met someone that used to be a professional skier.
They might have even reached the Olympics in their prime,
What will follow?
You’ll be thrilled by what you can potentially learn and gain from the other person, and that will guide the entire interaction.
Again, there will be a level of interest and engagement if you view others as worthy of talking to, but you’d never know unless you dug.
Whether we like to admit it or not, sometimes we feel some people are not worth our time.
It’s a bad habit, and this line of thinking is one of the first steps toward breaking it.
Everyone is worth our time, but you won’t be able to discover it if you don’t put in the work.
What do we have in common?
This is an investigation into the life experiences you share with someone.
It instantly makes them more engaging and interesting because we feel that they are more similar to us.
It may sound a bit egotistical, but we are undoubtedly more captivated by people that share the same views and interests as us.
It may even elevate people, especially if we are surrounded by different people from us.
For instance, if you discovered that a new stranger was born in the same hospital as you were, despite being in a different country, you would instantly feel more open to them.
This person must share similar worldviews, values, and humor.
But you wouldn’t have discovered that if you didn’t make an attempt at digging.
You’re going to be on a hunt, and you’ll ask the important questions that get you where you want to be.
You might jump from topic to topic, or you might dive in and ask directly.
Perhaps it’s just because you’ll have something to fixate on besides talking for talking sake, but these attitudes will drastically change how you approach people.
Curiosity can still be hard, which is why my final suggestion for creating curiosity is to make a game of it.
Your goal is to learn as much about the other person as possible.
Alternatively, assume there’s something extremely thrilling and exciting about the other person and make it your quest to find it.
Eventually, you’ll find what you’re looking for.
The next time you go out to a cafe or store, put these attitudes to the test with the captive audience of the baristas or cashiers you come across, the lucky few who are paid to be nice to you.
Do you perceive these workers to be below you?
Or do you treat them differently than you would treat a good friend?
Do you have a sense of wonderment and curiosity about them?
What do you think they can teach you?
And what do you have in common with them?
Do you tend to ask the baristas or cashiers about their day and actually care about their answer?
So the talk show host thing sounds like a trick, but it’s really just a decision.
You decide before the conversation even starts, this person has something interesting in them.
And then your questions naturally get better.
because you’re actually looking for it.
You know, I’ve caught myself doing the opposite, deciding someone’s boring before they’ve said three sentences.
And then, of course, the conversation goes nowhere because I wasn’t asking anything real.
Combine that mindset with Orca.
Go in curious.
Then reach for an obstacle or a realization instead of small talk.
And you’ve basically got the whole system from this book in about 20 minutes.
Now, if you want to go deeper into Patrick King’s catalog, this channel is built around exactly that, breaking down one book at a time.
And if you’re into seeing how this stuff shows up across a bunch of different authors, not just one, check out the main channel too.
Links are below in the description.
Please subscribe if this was useful and I’ll see you in the next one.