How to get better at small talk, as Christmas parties approach

How about this weather? Got any New Year’s resolutions? Any plans for the school holidays?

This time of year we’re forced into even more small talk situations than normal, as Christmas events are added to the calendar with family, friends and end-of-year office mixers.

Robert Poynton reckons feeling awkward about breaking ice and making chit-chat is totally normal. The University of Oxford associate fellow helps leaders have fruitful conversations and has written the book, Do Conversations: There is no such thing as small talk.

But there are ways to take the edge off, and audience warm-up guy Sam Smith has some skills in this area. He’s been chatting with crowds of strangers for about nine years in his role as a live audience warm-up person for TV shows like 7 Days, Jono and Ben at Ten and New Zealand’s version of Family Feud. But even he admits “sometimes it’s horrifically awkward”.

“The psychology of it is that you’re worried that you might make a bad impression about these new people you’re meeting … but that means you want to make a good impression with those people,” Smith explains.

So how can we navigate all the potential drama without feeling like dorks?

Do I have to make small talk?

Too often we undermine and overlook the importance of small talk, Poynton says.

“The thing about small talk is it’s designed to be small. It’s designed to get you somewhere else. So actually, if we were being more rigorous, what we’d say is we don’t like getting stuck in small talk.

“Small talk always has potential, it always has possibility and it’s a necessary phase.”

Adam Mastroianni, an experimental psychologist based in Washington in the United States, told RNZ that getting to know someone takes time and people who want to skip small talk may be regarded as suspect.

“Someone who wants to speed past the part where we get to know each other is a little bit suspect, it’s like ‘what is it about you that makes you want to skip the part where you reveal to me that you’re someone that I would like to talk to’.”

How to break the ice

Poynton says weather chat is a universal commonality – no one can say they don’t know about it.

But Smith says it drives him crazy to see people who have known each other for years catch up on something trivial.

So here are his tips to get the ball rolling:

• Loosen up the other person with humour to get over the awkwardness. Smith likes to drop some ‘would you rather’ questions. “This is when comedian me comes out. Just something that will loosen them up like ‘if you had to murder someone, who would it be?’ … people don’t normally answer those questions, and if they do, you can probably call the authorities straight away.”
• Ask the basics (their job, their family, what they did today), and from that you might find a string of commonality you can draw on. For example, if you know someone with the same name, or know something about their job, or have a similar hobby. “The more you do that, the more they feel like they’ve been listened to.”
• “If someone has an accent, I will often be like ‘oh, do you have an accent?’ and that will mean they can tell me about which country they’re from.”
• For people you haven’t caught up with in a while, acknowledge the time apart and get them to unload. That usually keeps the conversation going and you can just prod them along with more questions.

When you ask someone what they do for a living, “that must be hard” is a response which “gives value and worth to what they’re doing, and it also engages their imagination”, Poynton offers.

Pick up on ‘door knobs’ to dive deeper. Coined by Mastroianni, a ‘door knob’ is a strong or bold statement with an element of confession, which opens the door to the next stage of the conversation.

Or you can try the fast friends task to get some ideas – it starts off with small talk questions and then dives deeper for those you’re wanting to get intimate with.

If someone raises a tough question (usually it’s politics), you can buy yourself time by initially saying “that’s a really good question”, Smith says.

“If I’m uncomfortable with something, I’d say like ‘oh, we’re not doing politics chat’ … point it out and like front foot it so that you don’t have to get into it.” Or diverting them with another question can be a good idea.”

Deeper Questions: A new card game to get people talking

It’s going badly, how do I get out of it?

Smith has a few exit strategies up his sleeve. You could fake an urgent phone call or tell them you need the bathroom. If they keep talking, tell them you have diarrhoea.

“No one will ever question you on that. You will always be able to leave that situation and that person will not want to talk to you again.

“Another good exit strategy is to say you need something like ‘oh I’m gonna go grab another drink’ or ‘I’m gonna go grab some food’.

“Or introduce them to someone … and then fade into the background.

“Say like ‘oh, I better keep doing the rounds’ is another great line for moving around.”

When do I stop talking?

Think of the purpose and context of the conversation and you’ll know when to stop, Poynton says.

“I think it will also depend on personality. So there are those people that don’t know when to stop and talk too much and there are those people who don’t ever give anybody enough to go on.

“The skill is to develop a sensitivity and an awareness … and a lot of that is about paying attention to the people you’re talking with.

“You’ve just got to develop the capacity to sense that. But that won’t happen if you don’t think it’s important, so recognising, even whilst you’re talking, the importance of paying attention to others is kind of a fundamental part.”

Smith says if you’ve shoot yourself in the foot by asking something that you’re not sure you should have, point it out and apologise and tell them they don’t have to answer.

How do I get the balance right?

Poynton says there’s no hack to finding that sweet spot between showing interest and not oversharing or prying too much.

“If you accept and understand it’s a practice, it’s easy to get out of that trap of thinking there’s a secret,” Poynton says. “At the same time, it’s kind of like, you’ll never be done, this is complex, rich, deep, hard.”

Don’t get too caught up, and remember it’s about improving your relationships, he says.

“Rather than dwell on the bits that are a bit more uncomfortable that don’t really work, I think it’s important to remember what an extraordinary capacity it is. And that actually we’re all kind of really good at it already, even with all the technological difficulties that have been introduced.”

Smith agrees that it gets easier the more you talk to people and it’s difficult to get it wrong as long as you’re being polite and nice.

“As soon as you take the pressure off yourself, you don’t have to be an entertaining, hilarious, insightful person when you meet someone, if you’re just polite then people will go with you.”

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