The Best Career Advice of All Time: Shut Up

This article focuses on the importance of silence in having a good initial conversation. It states that, most of the time, the difference between a good conversation and a terrible one depends on who did most of the talking.

The key concept is not to completely shut up and be an unresponsive robot. Rather, the author advises us to tone it down a bit and be a listener, rather than the talker. Letting other people indulge in the desire to hear themselves can pay off in two ways. First, it steers the conversation towards a topic they are familiar with (and hopefully like). Second, it prevents us from monopolizing the conversation, which they say will likely make a bad impression.

To summarize:
Try not to take hold of the conversation by talking on and on about yourself. Instead, ask a lot of questions and encourage other people to talk about themselves.



The full article:
http://blog.brazencareerist.com/2012/01/31/quite-possibly-the-best-career-advice-of-all-time-shut-up/