To have repartee: how to answer tit for tat?
Written by: Loris Vitry (holistic coach)
Validated by: Cathy Maillot (Osteopath)
Caution: If you have any medical questions or concerns, please speak to your doctor. Even if the articles on this site are based on scientific studies, they do not replace professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.
Repartie refers to giving prompt and spontaneous answers relating to a topic or situation during a conversation with friends or family.
Far from being reserved for stage animals and star fans, it is a posture that can be learned.
Do you find it difficult to cultivate your sense of resignation?
Now is the time for you to learn and be able to respond straight away.
So find in this article, some techniques or tips that can help you.
Avoid rushing but save time
The first enemy of improvisation is haste.
Without interrupting your interlocutor, you have to know when to bounce back.
In order to avoid blanks and leave a little room for thinking, there are several techniques available.
Here are a few.
The one which consists in rephrasing the remark of your interlocutor is the most basic.
It allows you to take ownership of the question and demonstrate that it has been properly understood and then formulate the appropriate answer.
That which consists of relying on a quote or a proverb.
Take the example of a customer who is desperately discussing the price of a product he finds too expensive.
You can retort by saying that “the price is forgotten, the quality remains”.
Knowing how to improvise in all situations
Whether you’re in a meeting, in a job interview, and an insidious question pops out, you may find yourself running out of arguments or simply losing your way.
It is true that one does not master the art of improvisation and rhetoric so easily.
As a result, even if some are born with it, everyone can progress by exercising their sense of leaving.
This requires training yourself to visualize situations in which someone is testing you.
If you have to give a presentation, for example, anticipating questions that might bother you will be key to your success.
In particular, you have to be convinced of what you are saying because some people express themselves without conviction and very quickly become soporific.
In this case they become very easily accessible to critics.
Conversely, a communication made with great enthusiasm attracts you the sympathy of your interlocutors and thus greatly reduces the risk of being unsettled by an unfounded remark.
Be attentive and take your time to observe
It has been said that improvising is the art of bouncing back and finding a way out of a very embarrassing situation.
You usually have to take the time and observe the people who test you without staring at them.
Also try to take note of their imperfections like tics or their clothing.
This is the example of a young man who went before a jury for a commercial position.
Among these interlocutors, one had made the derogatory remark to him that he was not wearing a tie.
This young man did not disassemble.
He kindly pointed out to the same person that he was wearing sports socks with a suit.
Nicely, he put his nose to her lack of taste.
In conclusion, never be afraid to assert your personality while being moderate in your words.
Practice stopping videos to respond instead of a character
By following films, TV series or political debates; replay or pause when a hero or character is about to respond to a scathing or offbeat remark.
Put yourself in his shoes and try to predict his response.
Put the video back on Play and compare your answer to that given by the protagonists.
This exercise will encourage you to be more creative and find your own punches and setbacks.
Practice on social networks
Social networks constitute an ideal ground for the first tests.
Once in front of the screen, you are in control and you have time to voice your objections.
You will aim to reduce your response time.
In doing so, you will try to use transitional sentences in order to keep the other person’s attention.
Having a Twitter account could help you with the traffic and thousands of comments per day.
Appropriate a shock formula three times a day
Often referred to as the squeeze box exercise, aimed at morning, noon and night treatment.
It will be a question of spotting in the conversations, one or more funny expressions or one which nails the beak of the assistance.
For example, “you are never safe from a fluke.”
This is a phrase that you can use with multiple people throughout the day.
By repeating this exercise after three days, you will have time to register and anchor the sentence in the brain.
After you appropriate this phrase, try a new line two to three times a day.
Associate objective ideas
When you find yourself in a dead end, use a word typed on the fly in the caller’s sentence in order to bounce back and continue your argument.
“To do this, you have to activate the creative resources of your right brain where your intuition is located” says Séverine Denis, author of Avoir de la repartie in her professional life.
Documenting and collecting good replicas
The game is not a weapon in verbal jousting.
So showing your quick wit does not necessarily mean “nailing the beak” of your interlocutor.
On the contrary, the objective will be to establish a bond by using humor or a little derision.
However, to put this exercise into practice, you will need to write down the lines that seem relevant to you on your computer or in a small notebook.
After these steps, make a list and classify your information according to the chosen topics and reread it regularly.
You will get the benefit of stimulating your imagination.
During a scenario, you will be less disconcerted, you will have the ideas and the words you need.
By focusing on books, comedians, movies, blogs you will have an inexhaustible source of information.
Apart from all these methods you can use the objective mirror technique.
It is a technique of putting the other in front of your reality to make him feel what you are going through.
You will aim to question him and how he will act in certain situations if he were in your shoes.
Do not hesitate to use all these tips to sharpen your sense of departure, you will come out all the more grown.
Remember that you also have to avoid stress to be successful.
For this, you can follow our full Stress.app workshop.
Continue reading:
Learn to say no: how to do it without feeling guilty?
