If you read our previous post on making people comfortable, you saw a lot of very simple ways that you can instantly make people — men, women, whoever — comfortable around you. Hopefully you tried them the next time you were socializing. That’s good. Even guys who’ve been around the block a few times can find little things that they’re doing that need correction or improvement.

Now, we’ve got some more advanced ways for you to make people more comfortable around you. What these techniques will do is build a solid foundation for creating and nurturing attraction. Couple them with our tips from the last piece and a solid stack and you’re going to see your batting average increase dramatically.

Lead the Interaction With Body Language
You know already you that mirroring body language indicates the people are in sync with each other. But you can also lead with body language, both as a means of gauging attraction and as a way to display confidence. The latter has the tendency to make people comfortable around you.

Think about it: fidgeting can set people on edge because the interaction is rudderless, meaning that they have to expend energy on feeling on edge. Alternately, even small demonstrations of higher value, like leading body language can make a person feel more secure and tethered.

Start small. Open your body language up a bit more and see what she does. Alternately, take a step backward and see if she matches it. Don’t expect her to do it right way. Instead, watch her for a minute or three and see what she does.

Mirror Language
There’s a concept in linguistics called “registers.” Put simply: You speak differently around a group of friends than you do on a job interview than you do around your parents than you do when you’re chatting with a woman out at a bar or club. Mirroring body language can be very powerful. So can mirroring verbal language.

There are so many ways that you can do this. For example, you can speed up or slow down your speech patterns to match their cadence. You can start using some of the words that they’ve been using. You can alter the volume of your voice to match theirs. You can even raise or lower your pitch.

And much like taking the lead in body language, you can also take the lead with your verbal language as well.

Be a Giver Not a Taker
This is basically a more general application about what we said above about high and low value: High-value people give, low-value people take — or more accurately, expect to be given and become upset when they are not given to.

Think about it: What’s better than being around someone who makes you feel good about yourself? A lot of people tend to feel insecure. So when you go up to a group of people, recommend a friend, tell someone they seem cool, start with something like “I saw you from across the room and I just had to talk to you” or what have you, you’re offering a person something.

Compare that with going up to a group, asking for validation and lingering around.

A lot of seduction — be it meeting women or making new allies in the workplace — comes down to this. You give people something (a lot of times it’s something of nebulous value, like validation or praise) and they want to do things for you in return. So the next time you approach, introduce your wing as an awesome dude right before you tell a whole group of people that they seem awesome and you just have to get to know them.

And speaking of groups…

Pay Attention to the Group Dynamic
Every group has a dynamic to it. If you approach a group of people and start talking to one woman in it, you run the risk of making everyone in the group uncomfortable — and don’t think that everyone at the bar isn’t going to notice that straight away.

Instead, you need to go in and join in the group dynamic if you want to shape it. You need to wade in the waters to affect the current. So when you go up to a group, get to know everyone. There will come a time when you can have the woman you approach for all to yourself, but that’s not the immediate goal. And don’t feel like you shouldn’t be paying more attention to her than the others: Just don’t pay attention to her at the expense of the rest of the group entirely.

And, as always, have a good wing on hand to help you manage the group.