Better Small Talk: Talk to Anyone, Avoid Awkwardness, Generate Deep Conversations, and Make Real Friends

by Patrick King

Connection is crucial to happiness, staving off depression, and keeping healthy—literally. Various studies have shown that the effects of loneliness are akin to eating a poorer diet and exercising less, and can ultimately lead to the same place—an early death.

They found a clear correlation between substantive and deep discussions and greater well-being and happiness. It’s something you’ve probably suspected or even felt before, but being vulnerable and open with others is a deeply satisfying activity on many levels.

Very few of us are capable of being charming, spontaneous, and lively on a consistent basis. What’s more sustainable, easy, and practical, however, is preparing for a conversation beforehand.

Though it might seem counterintuitive, preparing well and making deliberate efforts to perform better in natural conversation can actually make you more spontaneous and relaxed. When you prepare for conversations, you’ll find being witty much more available and even easy.

While most of us recognize that marathon running is a skill you need to learn and develop, and that you need to work up to it and condition your muscles slowly, we tend to think the opposite of socializing and conversation; we just assume that either we know how to do it or we don’t, and if we find it difficult (when we haven’t warmed up or trained in any way), then we take it as proof that it simply can’t be done.

Humans are social creatures, but that doesn’t mean that socializing is natural, obvious, or even easy. You had to learn to walk and run, and in the same way you also have to learn to communicate effectively.

The simple act of engaging people in short bursts has been shown to make us happier and more inclined to be social, and it will also help us mentally and psychologically warm up to be our best in conversations and small talk no matter the context.

We need to engage in more short interactions—or what researcher Steven Handel calls “ten-second relationships”—with others, because they have the potential to boost our moods, change our perspectives, and warm us up socially. It’s as though these interactions keep the social engagement engine running.

make it a goal to initiate and create a ten-second interaction with a stranger each day, and especially on the way to functions, events, and parties. This will warm you up for conversation and build the habit of being interested in people.

To warm up your conversation and small talk skills, you just need to do something we’ve done almost every day in our lives: read out loud.

when making a big point, you should slow your pace to allow the impact to be felt. If you use the wrong speed or your pacing is off, a lot of what you have to say can easily be lost or confused and misinterpreted. In addition, well-timed pauses can say just as much as an expression through words.

if your body is tired, tense, or unhealthy, it’ll show in the way you speak.

Part of becoming a better communicator may mean learning to relax and being more aware of your body, your posture, and your self-esteem.

Anything notable?

What’s your biggest passion or interest outside of work? Anything notable?

Notable: What are your five most unique experiences? What are your five most personally significant accomplishments? What are ten strengths—things you are above average at, no matter how big or small. Name ten places you have traveled in the past five years. Name the past five times you have gone out to a social event. Name ten things you cannot live without—don’t take this question too literally. It is asking about your interests, not household staples.

Staying Current: What are the top five current events of the week and month? Learn the basics and develop an opinion and stance on them. What are four funny personal situations from the past week? Be able to summarize them as a brief story. What are the four most interesting things you’ve read or heard about in the past week? Be able to summarize them as a brief story.

Conversation, and by extension socializing and cultivating relationships with people, is something that happens by degrees, not all at once. Zoom out and you can see where small talk fits in and why it’s so important—it’s the first of many steps in closing the distance between you and another person. Small talk makes life easier, not harder.

The first level is, no surprise, small talk, also known as exchanging pleasantries or general chitchat. This is getting a conversation off the ground from a cold start. It needs to be small. Conversational warmup should center around a topic that everyone will be able to comfortably engage with. After all, at this point you don’t know the person in front of you at all.

Following small talk, you may both feel relaxed enough for the second step: fact disclosure. This is a “getting to know you” phase where you can start sharing details of your life—where you work or live, interests, what you’re doing at the moment, or something that connects to the previous small talk or the position you both find yourselves in currently. You get the chance here to open up a little more and share yourself as a person, which allows trust and confidence to build. However, keep in mind that this is fact disclosure—keep strong opinions and emotions out of the picture for now.

The third stage—opinion disclosure—brings you both closer still. Finding common ground allows you to share viewpoints and opinions. Finding what makes both of you the same is a deliberate attempt to seek out grounds for friendship. Without prying, ask thoughtful questions that will let you find a potential area of similarity.

The final stage of emotion disclosure is where you open up even further and share personal feelings directly. This has to be genuine. Everyone has different thresholds for this level of intimacy, so it’s important that conversation partners are both authentically trusting and comfortable with one another—hence all the previous stages! You might talk about something you’re excited or fearful about, or share a sincere compliment or private opinion.

Lack of social interaction itself is harmful, and for our purposes, lack of substantive social interaction is no better.

There is no pretense, there is assumed familiarity, you say what’s on your mind, you show your emotions, and you ask deeper questions borne out of curiosity. You don’t sit there and worry about if they’re judging you, nor do you judge them. There is a feeling of fond comfort, and a sense that you’re doing something enjoyable together.

we are indeed capable of setting the tone, and most of us do it in a way that is self-defeating—but we are capable of changing that if we put in a little effort.

The first, indirect method of breaking the ice is to ask people for objective information or a subjective opinion.

The second, indirect method of breaking the ice is to comment on something in the environment, context, or specific situation.

The third and final indirect method of breaking the ice is to comment on a commonality you both share.

Get comfortable asking questions and digging deeper than you naturally would. (Is it odd for you to ask five questions in a row? It shouldn’t be.)

To use elicitation, you make a statement that plays on the other person’s desire to respond for a variety of reasons. The other person will feel driven to respond, even if they had no prior interest in engaging. They will almost feel like they have no choice. A direct question will not always get an answer; thus, it becomes important to ask indirect questions to encourage opening up and creating engagement.

They may have been tight-lipped before, but any chance to enhance praise is welcome. People have a natural desire to feel recognized and appreciated, so give them an opening to show off a little.

You complain first, and they will jump at the opportunity. If they don’t join in, they might open up the other way by feeling compelled to defend what you are complaining about. Either way, you’ve opened them up.

People love to be right. This is truly the backbone of any Internet argument. So if you say something wrong, they will gladly jump at the chance to correct you. If you give people an opportunity to flex their ego, most will seize it happily.

Acting naïve makes people feel compelled to teach, instruct, and show off their knowledge. People just can’t resist enlightening you, especially if you’re ninety-five percent of the way there and all people have to do is figuratively finish your sentence.

When you ask someone a question, assume they are going to answer a certain way and keep elaborating on that sentiment.

The first way to set the tone is to speak like friends: topic-wise, tone-wise, and even privacy-wise. People will go along with the tone you set as long as you aren’t outright offensive.

That’s a mini-story. It’s answering questions (or spontaneously sharing) briefly using the elements of a story—an action that occurs to a subject with some sort of conclusion.

when people make small talk with you and ask any of the classic small-talk questions, they aren’t truly interested in the answers to those questions. They want to hear something interesting, so give it to them.

This is an important point to repeat: when we ask how someone’s weekend was, or what people’s travel plans are, we usually aren’t that interested in the literal answer.

Not only that, mini-stories are an inside view to the way you think and feel. They give clues to your mindset, personality, and emotional leanings.

With more details, there is a substantially higher likelihood that people will find something funny, interesting, in common, poignant, curious, and worthy of comment in what you have to say.

Detailed stories and conversations are inviting others to share a mental movie with you.

Details remind people of their own lives and memories and make them feel more drawn to whatever is presenting them. Details can compel others to laugh, feel mad, feel sad, or feel surprise. They can control moods and emotions.

This method stands for a story that (1) has one action, (2) can be summed up in one sentence, and (3) evokes one primary emotion in the listener.

a story should focus on one primary emotion to be evoked in the listener. And you should be able to name it!

Your primary goal is not to get people to applaud and think you’re awesome—the goal is to make other people feel relaxed and happy, and to get good, satisfying conversation flowing. And that means, the sooner you can get off your podium, the better!

The 1:1:1 method can be summed up as starting a story as close to the end as possible.

Like good conversation skills, good storytelling skills require pacing and gradual building of tension.

When we think about being good conversationalists, we almost always imagine the things we say, and how we say them. But it’s just as important to share attention and focus, so it flows back and forth.

The key? They ask for a story rather than an answer. They phrase their inquiry in a way that can only be answered with a story, in fact.