Become A Small Talk Ninja In 5 Minutes
Be a better conversationalist with 4 basic principles.
“So, what do think of this weather?”, she asked.
I rolled my eyes.
“The summer rains are doing god’s work to the local wheat farms.”, and I mentally checked out.
We both knew what was happening. She was in small-talking mode — one of the conversational darkest sins. Apologies chica, but I need you to take your small-talking business elsewhere.
THIS CONVERSATION IS OVER.
Small-talking vs In-depth-talking
Minimum substance and maximum awkwardness. This is the common denominator of most small-talk conversations. And this is why most people are so bad at them. They do not like feeling awkward and they don’t want to invest time in learning something of low substance.
Personally, as an introvert, I find small-talk as an unfulfilling chore and an unjustified expense of mental energy and stimulation. Surprisingly, though, most of my extroverted friends — who are masters at conversing with anyone— they also hate small-talking. Interesting. Everyone seems to hate it.
My proposition: Instead of trying to alter your biological clock to like small-talking completely change your POV.
Don’t change THE PLAYER, change THE GAME.
1. Give them something to remember
“What’s your name?”
“What’s you doing for a living?”
“Where do you live?”
I used to love these questions. I could get categorize a person in my head in less than 15 seconds. All that with the minimum amount of exchanged info and energy.
Late I realized, that my discussants were mirroring my low effort interaction. I would be “Thanos who does Accounting in Stockholm” for them.
BORING!
I knew I had to do something about this.
In his book Calypso, David Sedaris describes how he enjoys prank-punishing the mindless small-talkers he meets. So when he was asked the dull question “So, how was your flight?” by some receptionist, he would just reply
“Well, I was originally going to fly, but then this tiger offered to carry me very gently in her mouth. I said OK, but you know what? She wasn’t gentle at all. One of her teeth pierced my small intestine, so now, on top of everything else, I have to shit in a bag every day for the rest of my life!”.
Inspired by this, I decided to fight social inertia with movement. I applied a similar conversation tactic. I would try make myself memorable to strangers by approaching them with absurd questions, immediately after learning their names.
“So what is your horoscope?”
“Are you into dynamite fishing?”
“Do you like the smell of freshly-cut grass?”
And it worked wonderfully, most of the times.
This served a double purpose:
1) It breaks the ice of social awkwardness and establishes a conversational base.
2) It gives my co-discussant the free-pass to play along asking similar out-of-the-box questions.
2. Be 80% Listener — 20% Talker
If the book “How to win friends and influence people” has ever fallen into your hands, you will remember that one of Dale Carnegie’s axioms is ACTIVE LISTENING IS KING. Higher if possible. People are inherently self-absorbed. We either think our opinions are important, or we just want to focus more or listening to reply than listening to understand.
The best part? The times I personally apply active listening, I can see almost immediately the positive results. It is surprising how many things I have been missing by consistently half-listening.
I could learn my co-discussants better. I could increase the amount of conversation points. I could read their body language. Sometimes all it took, was to understand how their voice tone was changing when they were discussing something they were passionate about.
I practiced this tactic by “interviewing” the Uber or taxi drivers that were driving me somewhere.
These guys are starving for a talk. In the 10–15 minutes that they were driving me somewhere, I tried to hone this technique and make the discussion as much as possible about them.
The results?
- One of my taxi drivers was super involved in a semi-professional football team both playing and managing,
- Another one was trying to finance his way through college in Psychology and shared difficulties of doing that
- The last one told me all the details from a trip he took years ago to Sweden, and what fascinated him or estranged him.
It was as simple as actively listening and then directing the conversation on the subject they seemed to be passionate about.
In the end, it did not matter that I had no interest in football or the difficulties of a Psychology Bachelor's degree. I could still listen to an interesting story that I could share with someone later. Isn’t this the point of going beyond your co-discussant’s first layer?
3. Compliments Unlock Discussion Points
If you are only going to remember one thing from this post, remember this one! Continuing on the “How to win friends and influence people” goldmine: A compliment will open an insane amount of conversations.
What’s the trick here?
There is no trick. It just works! But it needs to be sincere and straight from the heart. YOU MUST BELIEVE IT! Otherwise, it looks like you are a patronizing buffoon.
In the “taxi driver’s experiment” I would just open a conversation by saying:
“It is very impressive that you manage to be so mild-tempered despite spending so many hours on the road every day”.
Driving is stressful for me and I could 100% support that internally. And all of the taxi drivers would gladly accept the compliment and would proceed with stories of road rage that they have faced in the past. The compliment made a good entry point in something they knew too much about.
But you shouldn’t go for a compliment overkill. More compliments does not translate to more rapport.
One or two sincere compliments are enough.
4. This Discussion is over.
I mentioned this in the intro.
The above methods amplify your ability of landing a proper conversation instead of having a lousy small-talk parody.
That doesn’t mean that you will click with everyone though. In multiple occasions it will just not work out.
I cannot remember how many times I put the effort, broke the ice, offered sincere compliments and tried to listen actively and the other person was still not following. No reason to worry.
If it feels that you are carrying the discussion for both of you then you just have to kill it. This might sound like a small defeat to you but it is actually a positive.
Press gently the eject button and politely move on with your life.
Find a new playmate.
Enough with small-talk.
In less than five minutes you just learned my basic principles that helped me boost my social skills.
Hopefully, you a bit more prepared now to minimize you small-talking and maximize your in-depth-talking.
But, before I go I want to ask you one question.
What do think of this weather?
