How to Make Small Talk

Conversation Starters, Exercises, and Scenarios

Melissa Wadsworth

• Editorial: Adams Media
• Año: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781507205006
• Categoría: Desarrollo personal
• Categoría: Comunicar y hablar en público

Learn how to improve your basic conversation skills and engage in pleasant small talk for more positive face-to-face interactions in this simple, visually engaging guide. With today's focus on technology and digital communication, face-to-face small talk is becoming increasingly difficult. How do you start a conversation with a stranger? What do you need to do to make a great first impression? What should you do when the conversation starts to drift off?In How to Make Small Talk, you'll learn the art of small talk for all types of situations. With simple advice, engaging visuals, and brief exercises, this book makes it easy to improve your casual chitchat skills. From professional networking to first dates to casual run-ins with a neighbor, you'll always be able to strike up a great conversation and leave a positive, lasting impression.

YOU CAN’T MASTER small talk if you don’t put yourself out there. It’s necessary to expose yourself to a variety of situations that call upon you to turn strangers into acquaintances, to refresh past acquaintances, and to build upon established relationships. You have to expend the necessary energy to be aware of your surroundings and the people in your personal landscape. Comfortable chitchatting and mingling come with experience and lots of practice. You should find yourself at greater social ease, and enjoying yourself more spontaneously and less self-consciously, as your small talk skills improve and positive experiences accrue.

Successful endeavors are usually the result of a learning process. If you aren’t consciously learning, you’re probably repeating mistakes. Let’s start small.

Small Talk Is Bigger Than You Think

Small talk has often been trivialized and downplayed as surface-speak, a time waster—usually by people who aren’t any good at it.

Forget any rocky experiences up until this moment; throw out those bitter labels you’ve attached to your troubled tongue. Small talk confidence is not as far out of your reach as you might think. You just need to adjust your attitude about how to approach small talk. Small is the operative word here. Little words strung together to open up communication lines between humans. Really, it’s no big deal. With a little finesse, small talk can be the tool that expands your circle of friends, increases the satisfaction you feel about your social life, and puts you at ease in various business situations. It can even lead to big deals—such as marriage and new clients.

In our rush from one activity to another, we have only a few minutes to catch up, connect with another person, and relay information.

If small talk is done poorly, we could end up feeling alienated from our peers, friends, neighbors, acquaintances, and coworkers. There’s no emotional spark or confidence in the interaction (if done in a real rush, there will be barely a memory of the interaction), and no real meeting of minds.

If small talk is done well, with enthusiasm and true interest, these brief encounters can be the foundation for positive, helpful, and lasting relationships.

Daily modern life does, and can still further, benefit from small talk that creates a helpful network of connections. For instance, we tell friends that we long for a date and they try to set us up on blind dates, drag us off to bars and clubs, or recommend Internet sites for personals and dating. Relay your latest work project topic/crisis and friends or associates listen with interest and provide suggestions that they think may be helpful. They may offer stories about what they’ve done in similar situations. Or a mother mentions to her child’s teacher that her reliable babysitter has moved away and the teacher recommends a neighbor’s daughter. We’re new in town and we ask a neighbor to recommend a good restaurant, a good dry cleaner, and so on.

SMALL TALK EXERCISE

DEVELOP YOUR SMALL TALK MUSCLES

The more often you work your small talk muscles, the more responsive they become.

Practice on the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker. Start by asking advice on their area of expertise. (More about neighborly exchanges in Chapter 5.)

Try the topics game. Jot down topics of interest to you and try introducing them into conversation. Start with a “did you know” question or begin by saying “I ran across an article that said… What do you think about that?”

Choose a get-to-know target. If you know of someone you find intriguing or that you think would be nice to know better, make an intention to actually do it.

Don’t hide behind being busy. If you find yourself more connected to electronics than humans, set a monthly goal for social activities.

What do these encounters have in common? The successful ones start with a pleasant “hello” and a smile and very little pressure to perform. Seems simple enough, so why is it that when it matters most, at a swanky party or an important networking event, we clam up or lose our mental capacity for free-flowing thought? Because in the face of the unfamiliar we become nervous. This causes self-protective behavior that closes us down rather than opens us up. We silently put up walls that limit our availability, even when we think we want to do just the opposite. Tension is not an energy that’s inviting to other people. There are some simple rules for engagement that can be your best friends in any social situation.

Your Small Talk Survival Accessories

First, start by acknowledging that in any interaction there are factors that you cannot control:

Another person’s personality

What he has on his mind (or hidden agendas)

His schedule

The number of people in the room competing for his attention

The presence of polite and not-so-friendly cliques

There are probably other factors too, but these are some of the most common. The key is to take a few SOS accessories along when you set out to make social and business connections. In this case, SOS stands for:

Self-confidence

Observation prowess

Sense of play

The potential for unplanned consequences is greatly reduced if you know that there is someone caring and loving supporting all your efforts—YOU!

Sense of Self-Confidence

It goes against all our basic instincts to be only minimally prepared when we enter situations in which we don’t know the terrain. And yet, it’s impossible to avoid being in social and business events in which we don’t know many (or any) people and have minimal information about who is hosting the event, how people might know each other, how we might best fit in, etc. The positive way to look at such an unknowable situation is as an adventure. Rather than being intimidated by such circumstances, try seeing the unlimited possibilities in such undefined circumstances.

THINK POSITIVE!

A positive attitude goes a long way. Taking the attitude that each step is helpful, no matter what the individual outcome of any date, party, or work event, should enable you to relax a bit in normally stress-inducing circumstances.

The first rule of self-confidence is to be yourself, your real self. If you don’t, it’s like arriving only half dressed—frightening indeed. Just as you should pay careful attenti...