Have you ever thought to yourself, damn, I wish we could just bypass all this boring small talk and get to the big juicy stuff, the deeper stuff and actually have an interesting conversation? Have you ever used it as an excuse in your own mind for not engaging in conversations? Oh, I only want to talk about the more interesting stuff, I’m not interested in the minutia of your day, what Bob said about Sue at your work…
Now, if you’ve ever read books, articles, or watched videos on this subject they will all tell you that small talk is like a springboard you have to use to leap to the bigger topics, or dive to the deeper stuff if you prefer your metaphors sunny side down.
In this edition I’m going to come at it from a different angle by offering you a fresh take on small talk, showing you how to plough straight through the middle of it like a combine harvester in a wheat field with rocket boosters, how to do it, and why this is better than trying to bypass small talk altogether.
Entering Small Talk at the First Level
So lets get the ball rolling on ‘empowering your small talk game and losing the awkward silences’, by just agreeing between ourselves what small talk actually is. Small talk, or surface level talk is based on what you can see, or what is happening in your immediate environment. It takes very little effort to find something to comment on, or to ask a superficial question about.
The good old weather, food if there’s food, other people, a speaker if you’re at an event, what the other persons wearing. This is all shallow surface level material and if your conversations routinely get stuck here, trying to milk a surface level subject neither of you is really interested in, in order to delay the arrival of the awkward silence, who wouldn’t feel like running the other way at the prospect of socialising... Unless you’re two weathermen perhaps.
What Drives a Fear of Small Talk
But did you pick up on what the actual fear was in that scenario? And did it resonate with you? Not being able to think of any other subject to grow the conversation with, and the inevitable arrival of an awkward silence. And that’s a real concern which speaks to a lack of confidence and social skills if your mind can’t readily think of other subjects, or find a way to grow its way out of the current subject.
That initial comment or question should be nothing more than a knock on the door of somebody elses attention. The type of response you get is your feedback from them as to whether they are open to passing some time in a conversation with you.
I think you’ll agree on this much though, you can’t just march up to a stranger and start talking about the climate, plastic surgery or whatever those big topics of interest are for you. There has to be some sort of introduction to get things started, and usually some intermediary talk in order to get the measure of each other, or tune into each others frequencies if you like.
Now I don’t know about you but I’m not counting introductions as small talk. And if you’re already bored by the introduction, then I recommend getting off Toktok because it’s ruining your attention span.
So, fear of the awkward silence, lack of social skills, lack of interest, a lack of patience are all potential drivers behind an aversion to small talk, after all, once you’re talking about stuff you know well and enjoy, then your mind can flow with knowledge and experiences to fuel the conversation, and you can begin enjoying the interaction. But sometimes there are drivers behind why people are deliberately keeping their talk small.
Why Introverts Crave Connection But Stay Alone
Think of this as being one of those delightful little contradictions that shy, socially anxious, and introverted people (to different degrees) have to wrestle with. We want to be in company but we choose to be alone. We want to be engaging in bigger topics, but we choose to stay small. Here are a few drivers behind these contradictions.
First is to guard against revealing anything about ourselves because we think we’re uninteresting, and by resisting sharing anything real, the other person will hopefully think we’re mysterious rather than boring.
Second, we’re not good at debating or arguing, so if someone starts pulling our ideas, opinions or beliefs apart, we’re not articulate enough to defend them, and there’s not much more frustrating than that.
Third is trust. We’re guarded and don’t trust the other person with our deeper thoughts. Certainly if you’ve revealed stuff about yourself in the past and got burnt for it when they later used it against you in some way, or gossiped about you, it’s hard not to assume the next person will do the same.
Fourth, you’re a power player. Whooo, what does that one mean? Well let’s suppose you’re happy to learn about the other person but you don’t want them to know as much about you. This type of play always makes a conversation or meeting unbalanced and unlikely to lead to a second one as I witnessed very starkly on a celebrity dating show.
When Conversation Becomes Shallow in Reality
In case you’ve not seen reality TV shows like these before, the format is to video two strangers in a restaurant having a blind first date, and all the subsequent awkwardness that comes with it. The popularity of these shows soon led to a celebrity dating agency version where one celebrity would go on multiple first dates over the course of several episodes in the hopes of finding – the one.
One particular celebrity just couldn’t secure a second date and he didn’t understand why, particularly as he felt he was very charming and charismatic. The feedback from his dates revealed that they found him to be very shallow. Watching the episodes it was clear he was gatekeeping anything of substance about himself, and thought this would go unnoticed if he was a good listener and encouraged the other person to talk more about themselves.
If you’ve read books like ‘How to win friends and influence people,’ you would be forgiven for thinking he had the right approach, but this book is over a hundred years old. Today you’re expected to share on an equal basis.
Our celebrity, felt he had good reason to be guarded against revealing anything personal, but all he achieved was to leave his dates with a feeling they had been short-changed and that he was shallow.
So the lesson for this minor celebrity really was to perhaps get over himself a little bit, and to get out of the shallow levels of conversation.
The Five Levels of Conversation
Level one is the surface level, the immediate stuff in your environment.
Level two is the information level where you reveal things about yourself like hobbies, likes and dislikes, what you do for work etc.
Level three is the opinion level where you reveal what you think and believe about different issues
Level four is the emotions level where you reveal how you feel about things, and
Level five is the relationship level.
So our celebrity was keeping his conversation deliberately at levels one and two, while encouraging his dates to reveal stuff about themselves at levels three and four, which meant they were never on the same level as each other and couldn’t really connect.
Imagine if the characters in movies always kept their conversations at level one and two? Cinemas would be closing down all over the place right? Fortunately script writers know this so the opposite happens and big screen romance conversations routinely begin at level three or four.
You probably hadn’t noticed, but trust me, this is what happens in movies, watch out for it the next romcom you watch and you’ll see no time is wasted on small talk. However, try applying the movie formula in real life and it would go down well, you’ll see with my example in a few minutes.
Fortunately we have more than and hour and a half to tell our stories, so we don’t need to force the conversation, but what if we wanted to anyway? What would that look like? Well, there’s a wrong way and a right way. Let’s go back to the levels where I will illustrate what the wrong way would look like, then I will show you the right way.
Expanding the Five Levels of Conversation
Indulge me for a moment as I add another level to the previous five, and thats the ground zero level. This level is usually occupied by the shy, the socially anxious, and the introverts whose social batteries are running low. At this level we’re keeping quiet and trying to go unnoticed in groups. This can be a very isolating and toxic strategy. I know.
As we’ve seen, there’s a logical progression to these conversation levels and going from ground zero
to level three or higher in order to bypass the small talk can be very challenging.
Imagine this for a moment, you’re on a plane getting a free ride while everyone else has paid for their seats. Sounds pretty good so far, right? This is the quiet person in the group that’s not joining in for whatever reason. Now lets extend this metaphor and imagine there’s a table set up on this plane and the passengers are having a game of poker. They’re all talking, laughing, bonding, and winning money - or making mad cheddar as they would say on one of my favourite shows - Breaking Bad.
But the ground zero guy isn’t even at the table, they’re standing back in the shadows, watching while everyone is bonding, except for them. From ground zero it’s possible to move up to level one just by coming to the table, sitting down and saying hi, this looks like a good game. Ground zero guy however, would find it much harder to come in at level two or higher, because this would require offering some information about themselves, and that would attract more attention on them.
On the other hand, a level one dweller can smoothly move up to information level two by saying something like - I’m good at poker, I played it a lot when I was younger, deal me in. Now they’ve revealed something about themselves without over-sharing, and given others a way to respond, such as by asking who they learned it from, or who they played poker with when they were younger etc.
What Happens When You Skip The Small Talk Levels
Now lets try jumping into this conversation at a higher level to see what it might look like. You sit down at our poker table and start talking about how you learned poker from your dad when you were younger, but now you think the game is for losers because it turned him into a gambling addict who lost all the familys money and got into trouble with loan sharks which led to even more serious consequences.
Who wouldn’t feel, uncomfortable, bummed out, and unsure how to respond?
Regardless of that, it’s was still easier for our character in this scenario to go straight in at opinions levels three and emotions level four because a common interest was already established, i.e. Poker. But what if you leapt straight in to a conversation at these levels without first doing your small talk due diligence and finding the common interests?
Now you could find yourself over-sharing on a subject that nobody has interest in. So clearly, unless you’re with established and trusted friends, don’t be to quick to skip the levels that enable you to find common interests and common ground.
Getting to Better Conversations Faster
This leads us neatly into the right way of using the levels In order to get to the better conversations faster. First off its crucial to find a common interest first so that you both find the conversation interesting. If you’ve ever found yourself captive while someone waffles on endlessly about something they’re passionate about, but you have zero interest in, and I’m sure you have, then you know exactly what I mean.
The secret then to reducing the time you spend in the weeds of small talk is… drum roll… Intention. The deliberate intention to employ social skills for finding common interests. Think this sounds like hard work? It’s not, infact when you have a goal for the small talk, then the small talk can become interesting in itself as you become the hunter.
Think of it a little like grouse shooting, you send a dog in to find and send a bird into flight. T
he grouse in this metaphor being the common interest of course.
Instead of dropping a dog into the conversation, you drop a low level topic question such as what’s your favourite movie, music, hobbies etc. But you might want to start with a question based on a topic of interest to you. I love the cinema and theatre, so I might ask a question like ‘Given a choice would you prefer to go to a movie, the theatre, or the opera?’
Hunting The Common Interests
As a common interest hunter you’re looking for any small change in their energy that would indicate interest, and you’re also listening for key words in the response. If they perked up and said, ‘I’ve always wanted to go to the theatre and see Les Miserables,’ we’ve just been given some information and a key word.
Many people in the small talk zone, on a date, or wherever the interaction is taking place, make the mistake of not picking up on the keyword and instead turn the topic spotlight on themselves. ‘Me, I prefer the movies, have you seen the brutalist yet?’
Soon enough this strand of conversation withers out to an awkward silence, instead of elevating to levels three and four where you can share opinions and feelings on Les Miserables, how you relate to particular characters, and then perhaps other musicals that have been adapted to film, and visa versa. The general experience of going to a theatre compared to a cinema and so on.
This is how a conversation maestro uses small talk as fuel to rapidly elevate the conversation by using active listening and being present in the conversation to hear the keywords and interest cues. Maybe the other person showed little interest in the subject, so you try out a different one. Here again is where awkward silences can creep in when we can’t think of anything to say so instead start scanning the room for a surface level comment.
In my program ‘The Conversation Maestro Method.’ One of the first strategies I teach is called ‘Ten topics in your pocket.’ It contains the ten topics that most often come up in conversation. More importantly I teach you how to recall any of these topics at the click of a finger.
Don’t forget, there’s another person in your conversation, and they may be asking you questions too. Chances are those questions will be based on one of those ten topics, so you need to know where you stand on each of them. And here lies another common mistake. Lets say our example question was asked of us, ‘Given a choice would you do a movie, theatre, or the opera?’ What would you say?
Whatever your response was, did it include any extra information? Like why you would choose the theatre or the opera? This extra information, or kindling as I like to call it, is what the other person can use to continue the conversation with.
You may have heard conversations as being likened to a game of tennis where the conversation ball is hit back and forth. By providing kindling in your responses you’re doing the equivalent of hitting the ball back, but if you only give a matter-of-fact response like, ‘I prefer the movies’, all you’re doing is catching the ball and stopping the flow.
Have I changed your opinion on the value of a little small talk? Or at least demonstrated its importance in social settings? To conclude, Don’t try and leap over the small talk with new people, but also, avoid getting bogged down by it.
Instead become a game hunter of common interests by asking open questions and actively tuning in for interest cues, then asking them more about it. In effect, giving the other person permission to talk more about their interest. If it’s not exactly in your own zone of interest at least the conversation is moving, which means it can be steered gently towards related interests of your own. Happy hunting.
Until next time, take care and keep self-developing.
