How to Make Small Talk

Small Talk can feel like it sits somewhere between wasting time and blatantly lying about how we feel. I’ll ask you about the weather because I think I’m being polite, but I swear to god if you start talking about the rain this weekend I’m going to knock you out.

It doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense, and I think we all find ourselves asking, “Why should I care?”

The Conversation Handbook covers every aspect of Small Talk, including conversational examples and break-downs as well as a deeper analysis of the points we’re going to cover here. I think my favourite part is that it helps you understand that Small Talk is actually useful!

But before you go and start going through the exercises in the book, here are the basics.

Here are three tips that can help you start improving your small talk today. Write them down and give them a shot next time you get into a conversation.

1) One Question: Questions can really get annoying, especially when you’re stringing them all together. How are you? What do you do for work? How do you like this city? STOP! You only get one question, then you have to change it up.

The Conversation Handbook has some great ideas for how to make asking a question more exciting, but in this case we’re going to rephrase it as a statement. “What do you do for work?” Becomes, “You must have a very challenging job.”

2) Tell Me More: The best response to a story is, “tell me more.” Choose a topic from the story that was most interesting to you and pursue it. In contrast, the worst response to a story is, “let me tell you how I did that better.”

3) Turn It Up a Notch: Try to match the energy level of the people in your conversation. If they’re fairly mellow and relaxed, adopt that same mode. But then add a small by noticeable amount of energy into your conversation. People will match your energy level and the conversation will get a bit more excited.

This serves two purposes: first, you become the defacto director of the conversation, which lets you move it to interesting topics. Second, when people snap out of their default conversational mode, they become more interesting and generally improve their own conversational choices, making it a better environment for everyone.

I want to share my favourite situational small talk topics with you. For some reason, these are the most effective topics to help me find out more about someone while keeping them engaged in each specific circumstance.

For Casual, Everyday Small Talk, Hobbies. Hobbies are arguably my favourite conversation topic, period, but for small talk topics any time I’m out and about and I’m reaching for something to talk about, I’ll try to find out more about my conversation partner’s hobbies.

Example: “So what do you do for fun? Any sports or are you a foodie?”

Hobbies have the added benefit of being related to a person’s passions, and they can generally talk about their passions for a long time.

For Networking or Business Small Talk, Vacation. Many people you’ll meet at a business event, like a conference, professional meetup or a business meeting, is going to have walls up. They’re protecting their personal life the same way they do in emails, by hiding behind a professional facade. We don’t want to talk to the facade.

Fortunately, there’s a topic that ties professional and personal life together–vacation.

Example: “I was thinking about doing a bit of traveling on my next vacation, maybe spending a week in South Africa. You have any travel plans?”

Notice that most people do something related to their hobbies or passions while on vacation, so you can segue into those when you see the chance!

For Night Life Small Talk, Relationships. When you step into a bar or pick up a beer, you can be reasonably sure that everyone’s barriers are coming down. One of the most engaging topics you can bring up is Relationships.

Example: “How do you guys feel about starting a relationship in a bar?”

One of the basic rules of small talk is not to talk about politics, religion or sex. Bending that rule a bit, making people’s minds wander to dating, romance and sexuality is always going to light a bit of a fire in the conversation.