Small Talk
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SMALL TALK
How to Start a Conversation, Truly Connect with Others and Make a Killer First Impression
DIANE WESTON
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Content
Part 1 Small Talk Novice
Why small talk?
What this book will teach you
Basics of Human Interaction
Introverts and Extroverts
Basics of Communication
Four-Ear Model
5 Axioms of Communication
Non-Verbal Communication
Facial expression
Tone of voice
Posture and gestures
How to Use Body Language when Making Small Talk
SOFTEN for positive non-verbal behaviours
Part 2 Small Talk Apprentice
Create a Positive Mindset
Trust in your own value
Be kind to yourself
Stop fearing being judged
Feel you are part of the group already
General Rules for Small Talk
Listen
Be curious
Provide information about yourself
Be respectful
Be honest
Watch non-verbal cues
Detect clues
Be emphatic
You don’t have to be right
First Impressions
Presence
Positivity
Eye contact
Nerves and Social Anxiety
How can breathing help?
Part 3 Small Talk Master
First Rule of Conversation: Complete Attention
Who To Talk To
Group versus one-on-one
Approaching a person standing alone
Approaching a group
Make a decision based on each individual situation
Conversation Starters
Shared experience
Ice Breaker Comments
Small Talk Techniques
The ARE Technique
The FORD small talk method
Other acronyms
Example conversation using the FORD method
How to keep the conversation going
How to exit a conversation
Example Conversations
Troubleshooting
Conversation won’t start
Conversation stalls
Conversation partner gets glazed eyes
Conversation won’t end
Conversational Black Hole
Conclusion
Part 1
Small Talk Novice
W ow , nice weather we’re having today,” you say to the stranger who’s standing next to you. Yep, sure is,” the person responds. And the silence lengthens.
A small talk nightmare — and one you’ve probably encountered before since you’re reading this book. But it doesn’t have to be like that. This book will explain all about it, why humans engage in small talk, what affects how well you succeed at it, and will give you tips and tricks to make you better at small talk so you can be better at life.
Why small talk?
Well, it turns out that small talk can actually have a big impact on your life and the lives of others. Just because you’re only chit-chatting with someone, doesn’t mean you’re not connecting with that person. Small talk is sometimes denigrated by suggestions that it isn’t deep — it’s only superficial. But small talk, if done correctly, can allow you to connect in a meaningful way with the person at the grocery store checkout, or your partner or child.
Small talk is a necessary social skill that has evolved to turn people you don’t know into people you do. It turns a stranger into an acquaintance or an acquaintance into a friend.
Small talk is a skill that can be learned. It is an ability that can actually bring you closer to, not only strangers you meet on an airplane or at a party, but also to the people you know best.
Perhaps with practice you will eventually become a small talk master. You know, the kind of person that you’ve only been talking to for a couple of minutes but who has already made you feel at ease.
Learning to be good at small talk means that you don’t have to have any more awkward social encounters with people you don’t know. By using exchanged words as a bridge between you and the other person, you can connect with them emotionally and form perhaps a weak social tie known as an acquaintance, or you may deepen a close relationship you already have with a friend or a partner.
The key to being good at small talk is to give attention to the other person without thinking about what you’re going to say next. Giving attention is the most valuable gift you can give another person and will be discussed in more detail later.
What this book will teach you
In this book, you will learn how to master small talk. In the introduction, we will begin by understanding the basics of human interaction, communication, and why we speak to each other the way that we do. Once you understand the mechanics of small talk, in the second section we will get into preparing yourself for communicating and connecting with other people. The third part of the book will provide concrete techniques and methods for making small talk, as well as giving you some troubleshooting tips. At the end of the book, you will find some useful checklists to help when you are practicing and preparing for a social event. So, with that said, let’s get started learning how to make small talk.
Basics of Human Interaction
Humans evolved social capacity as part of our evolution. The neocortex is the part of the brain that controls social interaction. When you compare the brains of primates with the brains of humans, you’ll find that in humans the neocortex is far larger and more developed. We evolved to be social beings. And for good reason. One human is hard-pressed to fend off a wild animal, but a group of humans can easily defeat a wolf, bear, or lion.
Recently scientists have discovered that our need to connect is as fundamental as our need for food or water. Communication is what builds social bonds and is what connected primitive humans so that they could work together to protect themselves and their families. Modern humans need communication just as much — or perhaps even more in our supposedly disconnected era — in order to connect with others in work and play and also to build healthy relationships.
Introverts and Extroverts
There can be no discussion of small talk without touching upon the differences in communication styles between introverts and extroverts. Many people think that they understand the terms but there are a few myths that need clearing up.
The main difference between introverts and extroverts is where the person gets their energy from. An extrovert gets their energy from people and may feel depleted if they spend too much time alone. On the other hand, introverts recharge their energy when they spend time by themselves, and being around other people tends to reduce their energy reserves.
There are a few other differences in that, as
a general rule, introverts like to have more time to think about things before they speak and extroverts tend to be quick in groups to formulate thoughts and express them. This has given a false impression that introverts sometimes don’t have anything to say or are even mentally inferior. That is simply not true. Yes, often in a group, an introvert will barely speak. But if you give an introvert time or get them alone one-on-one, they will talk your ear off with all their ideas.
How does this affect our discussion on small talk? Well, it is good to know if you are an extrovert or an introvert. A quick search online will show you many quizzes that you can use to determine where you get your energy from. Knowing this, you can understand yourself better and the amount of effort it may take you to become good at small talk.
Also, it may be good to try and gauge your conversational partner so that you can adjust your communication style to take into account the other person’s communication comfort level.
An extrovert, who in the past wasn’t good at small talk, may have simply been talking too much about themselves or about subjects that turned off the person they were talking to. Whereas, an introvert, who in the past didn’t do well with small talk, may have been unwilling to push past the discomfort of speaking with someone who they didn’t know very well. We will deal with both sorts of challenges in the main part of this book.
Basics of Communication
We will now look at two different models of communication in order to understand how people communicate on a deep level. This will allow you to follow what's truly happening in the conversation beneath the words.
Four-Ear Model
We will look at Schulz von Thun’s four-ear model of communication in order for you to get a better comprehension of why people say the things they say and to enable you to better understand your conversational partners. This will not be very technical, so don’t worry, and it will give you a basis for making sense of your interactions with others, both in your deep relationships and on a more superficial level when making small talk with strangers.
Schulz von Thun’s four-ear model of communication states that there are four levels of interaction. In any exchange between two people, there are the following four levels of a message: Factual information, the self-statement, the relationship indicator, and the appeal.
Here is a quick explanation of what each part means.
Factual information - the bare content of the message.
The self-statement — this is the part of the message that shows something about the speaker.
The relationship indicator of the message - tells the listener something about how the speaker feels about the person they’re speaking to.
And last, the appeal part of the message - what the speaker wants the listener to do.
For example...
A couple is standing in their shared living room. The one who works out of the home says: "Wow, the living room is a mess."
With this statement, there are four levels that this message can be interpreted on.
Sender: “Wow, the living room is a mess.”
Factual Information: The living room is very untidy.
Appeal layer: Why is our house so untidy when you're here all day?
Relationship layer: You should clean it up.
Self-revealing layer: I don’t like when the house is messy. I want you to clean it before I get home.
Receiver:
Factual Information: The living room is very untidy.
Appeal layer: So, you're saying I shouldn't spend my time with the baby, I should leave her by herself in her crib and clean the house instead?
Relationship layer: You think my parenting is questionable.
Self-revealing layer: You don't understand the importance of what I'm doing spending time caring for the baby all day and not cleaning.
Because of the perceived intention of the message, the receiver might answer:
Receiver: “Sarah needs me to take care of her, not clean up the living room. If you want it tidy why don't you clean it yourself?"
What we need to take away from this four-ear model of communication is that it is very important to be clear when we are communicating. All the levels of our message need to work in harmony. If you are making an appeal, don’t couch it in language that will make it difficult for others to understand that you are asking something of them. State it clearly and upfront.
As a listener, it’s important to understand that what we hear is often not what the speaker intended to communicate. It is very easy to misunderstand and we should check back and restate what we think we’ve understood to make sure that that is what the other person intended to communicate.
As communicators, if we understand that it is very easy to misunderstand someone, then we will be more careful when we speak to be sure we are conveying what we want to communicate. And when we listen, we will be aware of the fact that it is highly likely that we are misunderstanding what we are hearing. We will use check backs to ask if what we heard was what the person meant. In that way, we will be more successful in communicating what we really wanted to say.
5 Axioms of Communication
This model is important because even though some of it is self-evident, these are the sorts of reminders that we need to think about when we want to improve our communication skills. Having a good understanding of what people are really saying when they talk will help you understand what's going on in every conversation you have, so instead of mistakenly assuming that you know what the person is really trying to say when you don't, you will now know how to respond properly in each situation.
The five axioms of communication according to Paul Watzlawick are as follows:
You cannot not communicate.
Every communication has a content and a relationship aspect.
The nature of a relationship is dependent on the partners’ communication procedures.
Human communication involves both digital and analog modalities.
Inter-human communication procedures are either symmetric or complementary.
So, what in the world does that mean? Well, let’s unpack each axiom to understand what exactly each one is telling us.
You cannot not communicate. This is referring to the fact that in any exchange, whether verbal or otherwise, you are always communicating. It’s simply impossible to not communicate. Even if you do nothing, that is sending a certain message.
Every communication has a content and a relationship aspect. This is similar to the four-ears theory in that it’s pointing out that in every exchange there is the content that is being conveyed and then there is another level that is what the speaker feels about the listener and what the listener feels about the speaker. For instance, if in the past you were the sort of person who made small talk without really caring about the other person, then your words would have been saying one thing, but your non-verbal communication would have been sending a very different message.
The nature of a relationship is dependent on the partners’ communication procedures. This refers to the process of turning messages into meaning. It points to the misunderstandings that we talked about with the four-ears theory and comes back to the fact that just because you think you’ve conveyed your message clearly, it doesn’t mean that the other person has understood it in the way that you wanted them to.
Human communication involves both digital and analog modalities. Digital just means what you say. Analog is how you say it. This is extremely important because if you angrily shout “I love you!”, it doesn’t exactly convey love. And the person that you shouted it at, probably wouldn’t believe that you really loved them. When there is a discrepancy between the words and the tone/body language, people consistently believe the non-verbal language.
Inter-human communication procedures are either symmetric or complementary. Symmetric relationships are ones in which both parties are equal. Complementary relationships are unequal, where one of the people has more power than the other, for instance,
in a teacher-child relationship.
So, in summary, whenever you have any kind of interaction, you are always communicating. There’s always more than one level to the communication — there’s the actual message and then there are other layers, such as relational aspects and non-verbal language. And in any human exchange, the interaction is either between equals or it isn’t. These axioms are self-evident but sometimes you need to face the obvious and think about it.
Knowing about these models of communication will help you to be more aware of what's really happening in the conversation underneath the words. This, in turn, may help you diagnose what might be going wrong and the reason for it so that you can respond or change what you are saying accordingly, in order to improve the conversation.
Paying attention to the way that people communicate will help you to be a better communicator yourself. And, in turn, it will allow you to be great at small talk.
Non -Verbal Communication
Non-verbal communication encompasses any communication that is not words. So, it can include eye contact, facial expressions, the tone of voice — including volume and pitch, personal space, touch, gestures, posture, and appearance, as well as many other non-verbal cues.
More than half of communication is non-verbal, so it is very important that your facial expression, posture, and tone of voice all align with the message you’re trying to communicate. Otherwise, you’ll be misunderstood.