SMALL TALK

Reading 1

How To Be Better At Small Talk

By Frances Bridges

Contrary to its name, small talk is important. It is the segue to job interviews,
friendships, romantic relationships, meaningful connections and of course great
conversations. But discussing light topics isn’t always easy, especially with people you
do not know and with whom you may not have much in common. Small talk is an
acquired skill, and therefore requires a lot of practice. But the practice is often ugly,
painful and awkward, which leads people to steer clear of it entirely. But it doesn’t
change its importance, its impact on how you are perceived and how well you can
move through world. If you can bear to practice, your social skills will improve. Here
are a few tips that will help you be better at small talk:

Put Your Phone Away

One way to ensure a conversation never gets off the ground is to keep checking your
phone. “It’s a crutch, truly,” says Debra Fine, speaker and author of “The Fine Art Of
Small Talk.” “When you have your phone exposed, you send the message that you
might take a call. Unless you are worried about your three year-old child, who you
should mention, put your phone away.” Fine went on to say that making conversation
is hard, because we can’t always control how it will go, and therefore if it sputters we
use our phones as a way to abort the awkwardness. “When we don’t feel in control, we
don’t feel comfortable,” she said.

Know Your Best Social Environment

It is important to be able to adapt to different kinds of social environments, but it is also

important to know yourself, when you are most comfortable and able to be yourself.
“I’d say that regardless of where someone falls on the introversion-extraversion
continuum, it helps to recognize the kinds of situations where you’ll be most
comfortable interacting with others and pursue those kinds of settings,” writes therapist
and friendship expert Miriam Kirmayer. “There isn’t just one ‘right’ way to socialize
and getting caught up in this narrative can increase the anxiety that comes with
networking, small talk, and making friends.”

Use Free Information

Fine says that if you are going into a social event where you do not really know anyone,
it’s best not to go into that situation without having two or three conversation topics in
your back pocket. “If you don’t know anyone, it’s best to use the information around
you, start with the event. Ask someone where they are from, and if not what brought
them here, whether it is a wedding, networking function, etc." Fine warns not ask
people what they do or what their title is, especially at a work event, as the conversation
will likely get there organically. “Ask, ‘What keeps you busy outside of work?’” Fine
recommends. She discourages asking about marriage or kids, because that is personal
and often leads to a dead end in the conversation, especially if the answer is no. Fine
says if people want to discuss their partner or kids, they will integrate it into the
conversation. Fine also discourages discussing work, it is not how meaningful
connections are made. She believes asking open-ended questions, especially about the
event, the season, the surroundings etc. are easy and a good starting point.

Questions such as:

 “Are you from around here?”

 “How do you know the host/hostess?”
 “What have you heard about the speaker?”
 Consider the time of year: "Do you have any plans for the summer?"

Considering conversation topics in advance and using "free information" helps avoid
the tension and the awkwardness that comes with nothing to talk about. “The worst
time to think of something to talk about is when there is nothing to talk about,” says
Fine.

Convey Warmth And Positivity

So while you're having a light conversation, how do make a good impression? “Ask
them questions and make sure to really listen to what it is they are sharing as opposed
to planning your next response. Make sure you are also showing up and owning your
space in the conversation,” writes Kirmayer. “Not only does self-disclosure lead to
increased feelings of closeness and trust, it helps both of you to gauge whether you’re
on the same page about wanting to build a friendship. Above all, be yourself.
Insincerity is off-putting and fairly easy to spot.”

Be Comfortable With Silence

If there is some silence, don’t panic. Kirmayer says that being comfortable with some
silence in a conversation conveys confidence that is comforting. “If it’s gone on too long
and you’re looking for a way out, try asking open-ended questions – the kind that will
hopefully result in more than a one-word answer,” she writes. “Ideally, ask about a
topic that you can also speak to so that you can help keep the conversation going and
you aren’t entirely dependent on the other person’s response. When in doubt, bring up
an experience or perspective that was shared earlier and let them know you’d love to
hear more about it.”

Improve Your Self-Talk

Small talk can be anxiety-inducing, especially with people you do not know well and in
situations that are not ideal. In these moments Kirmayer says to be conscious of what
we’re thinking and identify what scares us. Kirmayer calls them, “mental traps.” “So
many of us anticipate the worst-case scenario (like being rejected) or label ourselves as
“awkward”. Criticism is not encouraging- compassion is. As much as possible, it helps
to speak to ourselves the way we do with a good friend,” writes Kirmayer. “Adjust
your self-talk, take a few deep breaths, and if you need to take a break for some air or a
few minutes alone, it’s more than okay to do so. Ideally, this kind of self-care will help
you to actually engage with, instead of avoiding, others.”

Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/francesbridges/2019/04/25/how-to-

be-better-at-small-talk/?sh=3063ad425ca5

Reading 2
Make Time for Small Talk in Your Virtual Meetings
By Bob Frisch and Cary Greene

It was an unusual confession from a CEO. “During my last staff meeting we must have
spent 40% of the time talking about nothing,” Jorge said. “We were just hanging out,
shooting the breeze, like the old days. It was one of the most enjoyable, productive calls
we’ve had since we shut the office.” But afterwards, he went on to say, “a few people
complained.”

On a call shortly after, Rose, the company’s president, added her perspective. “I was not
happy, and neither was our CFO, so I talked to Jorge about it,” she explained. “Maybe
he’s got time on his hands, but I’m on Zoom 12 hours a day. Frankly, if I’ve got a half
hour available during the day, I’d rather walk out of my home office and spend the time
with my husband and kids.”

Although tension always exists between time spent on the substance of a meeting and
time spent socializing, most recurring meetings reach a natural balancing point — at least
until the equilibrium is disrupted by a change in circumstances or in the personalities
involved. Having to meet via Zoom (or one of the other platforms that now constitute our
virtual conference rooms) has tipped that balance.

The loss of small talk seems to be a challenge not only for Jorge and Rose, but for many
executives. We’ve identified two common causes:

“Gathering time” is gone. Pre-Covid, executives often had the chance to casually chat
with colleagues while they grabbed coffee before a meeting started. Once at the table,
these one-on-one or small group conversations sometimes continued for a while longer,
perhaps spreading to the larger group before the meeting got down to business.

Today, as participants’ windows pop up on the screen, it’s either talk to everyone or don’t
talk. As a result, Zoom etiquette seems to call for meetings to get underway either on
schedule or shortly after the relevant participants have signed on, depending on the
culture. But the best opportunity for a team to “shoot the breeze” without impinging on
meeting time — those few minutes of pre-meeting gathering time — has vanished.

Zoom fatigue is rampant. Both Jorge and Rose are energized by their jobs and the success
the team has had in adapting and pivoting through Covid. But like many
executives, they’re exhausted from the back-to-back, morning-to-night, continuous flow
of Zoom calls.

Many managers find themselves depleted of energy before their workday is over. It
shouldn’t be a surprise that prolonging a call unnecessarily might strike these folks as
irritating, especially when they know that the moment they leave the meeting they’ll be
free to spend time on the other, sorely needed side of the work-life balance.

But making time for small talk is important. Jorge rightly believes that continuing his
team’s extraordinary level of performance depends on maintaining and growing the
culture he’s spent the past few years instilling in the company and among his team.
Jorge’s concerns are centered on creating, maintaining, and deepening individual and
group relationships. He knows that quickly integrating new members into the team
requires more than a series of background briefings. It involves getting to know the other
members as people as well.

Those moments, for Jorge, surface during or after unstructured conversations. There’s a
virtue to “hanging out.” It’s the chit chat, the side conversations that lift emotions and
promote well-being. It’s one way we strengthen and deepen relationships and is critical
to building high-performing teams.
How to Reintroduce Small Talk into Your Meetings

While we can’t solve the problem of finding a virtual replacement for a round of golf, an
afternoon’s sail, or a long dinner with a few glasses of wine, we have come up with a few
ways to help reinstate this important component of your meetings.

1. Make small talk an agenda item, not an afterthought.

Jorge didn’t have any plan in place when he allowed a large part of his meeting to
devolve into a conversation about nothing. It just happened. And the fact that it was
spontaneous, while energizing and enjoyable to Jorge, turned it into an imposition for
Rose and others.

Were he to do it again, Jorge might inform the team of his intent to deliberately create
space for more personal, informal interactions as part of their virtual meetings. While this
may seem paradoxical — planning and scheduling the casual and spontaneous —
creating expectations and setting boundaries will increase the team’s comfort to embrace
the change.

2. Start team meetings with an individual check-in or individual icebreaker.

An activity or ice breaker at the beginning of a meeting is a timeless way to connect

participants. Over the years, groups attending regularly recurring meetings, like Jorge’s
weekly staff meeting, often abandon icebreakers as unnecessary.

In a virtual world, beginning meetings with an icebreaker is a first step to reintroducing

small talk.

One client asked each individual to take a minute and share what had been happening in
their lives, both professionally and personally. She went first and modeled the tone and
candor of the exercise, explaining that a loved one was ill and describing how it had
affected her. Others followed suit and immediately the group felt more connected and
comfortable with each other.

Alternatively, inject some fun at the beginning of their meetings. One CEO asked each
team member to send along a baby picture of themselves. At the beginning of each
meeting, the CEO shares one picture and asks each team member to guess who it is. This
often leads to laughter and some good story telling — pretty good results for an
investment of two to four minutes.

3. Introduce agenda items designed around opinions and conjecture.

Put your team on a level playing field. Occasionally bring up a discussion topic on which
most people will have an opinion, use polling to get your team’s individual views on the
table, and then let the conversation meander.

Instead of a “conversation about nothing,” Jorge should swap in a topic designed to

collect opinions on broad themes or focused on creative brainstorming. These are still
“talking about the business,” but at a much higher altitude than the transactional, day-to-
day agenda items. And because they’re opinion based by design, it becomes hard for any
team member to claim special expertise that overrides the opinions of the others.

A question like “When do you think the next indoor sporting event or concert with over
10,000 spectators will be held?” has, at the moment, no right answer. Fifteen minutes
discussing the range of views among Jorge’s team on this or a comparable topic would
make a great start.

4. Leave unstructured time at the end of team meetings.

Another way to open up an opportunity for informal chatter while accommodating

Rose’s concerns for efficiency is simple — leave the choice up to each participant.

If Rose knows in advance that Jorge may choose to use 15-20 minutes of unallocated time
at the end of his next staff meeting just to chat as a group, she can decide for herself
whether to hang around. Unlike when the open conversation happened at the beginning,
Rose will no longer feel ambushed, trapped on the call with no idea how long it will take
to get back to business. If she needs to move on, she’ll just move on. And Jorge will have
an even more convivial group, knowing that everyone around the table knows they too
can drift out of the conversation when needed.

Small talk is a big deal. It’s time to bring this missing piece of your team’s culture to the
virtual world.

Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2021/02/make-time-for-small-talk-in-your-virtual-

meetings
Reading 3
Remote Workers Need Small Talk, Too
By Jessica R. Methot, Allison S. Gabriel, Patrick Downes, and Emily Rosado-Solomon

Before Covid-19 and social distancing, small talk was a daily workplace ritual for most of
us. We exchanged hellos with colleagues on our way in from the parking lot, chatted
about our weekends while waiting for meetings to begin, and swapped stories about our
families with our cube mates. Though these encounters probably lasted only minutes,
they played a crucial role in making us feel emotionally connected at work.

Small talk is important to us in other ways, putting us at ease and helping us transition to
more serious topics like negotiations, job interviews, sales pitches, and performance
evaluations. The tidbits we learn about our colleagues — for instance, that they play
guitar or love dogs — build rapport and deepen trust. Research even suggests that chance
encounters and spontaneous conversations with our coworkers can spark collaboration,
improving our creativity, innovation, and performance. Many people say that small talk
energizes them and makes them feel “seen.” As one employee of a midsize accounting
firm told us, “Your coworkers don’t necessarily need to know every detail of your life,
but it certainly helps everyone feel like a real person.” No wonder so many of us
are mourning the loss of small talk during the pandemic-driven work-from-home boom.

Yet others are deeply skeptical of small talk. They say it makes them anxious, spreads
gossip, wastes time, and is inauthentic and awkward. Some even arrive at meetings
exactly at the start time to avoid having to chitchat. This makes small talk a bit of a social
paradox and raises the question: Is it ultimately more helpful or more hurtful to
employees’ daily lives?

To resolve these views, we surveyed 151 full-time working adults three times a day for 15
consecutive workdays before the pandemic. We asked how much small talk they made at
work each day and about their positive emotions (friendliness, pride, and gratitude) and
ability to focus. And each night they reported their levels of well-being and prosocial
behaviors.

The results revealed that small talk was both uplifting and distracting. On days workers
made more small talk than usual, they experienced more positive emotions and were less
burned out. They were also more willing to go out of their way to help their colleagues.
At the same time, they felt less focused on and less engaged in their work tasks, which
limited their ability to assist others. However, we found that one group — people who
were adept at reading others and adjusting their conversations in response — were less
likely to report feeling disrupted by small talk. We also saw that conversations didn’t
have to be intimate or lengthy to deliver benefits. On the whole, it was clear to us that the
positives of small talk outweighed the negatives and that those negatives could be
managed.

As organizations consider their optimal post-pandemic remote-work strategy, they’ll

need practices to integrate small talk into their work ecosystems. The good news is that
the virtual landscape presents a surprising opportunity to enhance the value of small talk.
Drawing on our research, we offer managers and employees the following advice:

Encourage new social rituals. Working from home has blurred the lines between
people’s jobs and their personal lives, and without routines like daily commutes to divide
them, many employees are struggling to shift gears between the two. Small talk can help
people disengage from the “home” role and ease into a business mindset. That’s why it’s
a good idea to build in time at the start of every meeting for members to greet one
another, exchange pleasantries, and ask playful questions. This can also set a positive
tone for a meeting.

Other tactics include creating “virtual lounges” in Slack or Teamwork where teams can
socialize and holding regular virtual coffees, trivia nights, and happy hours. A recent
INSEAD study of more than 500 professionals working remotely across the world
showed that the teams that were thriving in the new virtual environment were formally
scheduling social gatherings involving quizzes, shared playlists, book recommendations,
and movie clubs. Although this mandatory “fun” might have felt a little awkward at first,
the teams that didn’t engage in such rituals struggled to adapt to the new normal and
reported feeling less connected.

Re-create “casual collisions.” Some organizations have found creative ways to

orchestrate informal virtual interactions among employees. There are companies
like Spark Collaboration that help employers organize “office video-chat roulettes” that
pair up employees who don’t already know one another for real-time social interactions.
One Spark client at a global law firm explained, “During the pandemic it was important
to us to make sure employees were still making the random connections you might find
in a shared office space to help with innovation, building networks, and collaboration. It
has been invaluable for relationship building.” Platforms like Airmeet set up virtual
speed networking for employees. One probable upside is that these exchanges, though
less spontaneous, are more inclusive — giving everyone the opportunity to connect
rather than leaving it to chance.

Stick to the script. Managers and employees alike should be careful not to let social
conversations take a negative turn. Small talk should be polite, surface level, and focused
on neutral topics, like the weather, sports, and TV shows. It should never devolve into
gossip — especially about the company or other employees — which breeds
incivility, cynicism, and distrust. Managers should also steer teams away from potentially
controversial topics like religion, politics, and romantic relationships. Another thing to
avoid is excessive self-disclosure: Sharing your deepest anxieties may be okay when
you’re meeting a friend for coffee, but it’s not when you’re greeting an acquaintance. If
someone asks, “How are you?” it’s ill-mannered to rant about your bad day.
Nevertheless, the pandemic has made it commonplace to say things like “Hope you and
your family are safe and well” and to acknowledge our feelings of worry and concern.

Emphasize the upside. Highlighting the ways small talk can boost employee happiness
as well as the company’s bottom line can win over people who tend to self-isolate.
Encourage employees to take charge of their own social health by building in daily social
breaks. Although these might seem counterintuitive when you’re under deadline
pressure, our research suggests that they are restorative and reduce burnout. New online
apps, such as Water Cooler, allow employees to pick a time to chat with coworkers about
shared interests, hobbies, or fitness goals. Because the program sets a fixed window for
conversations, it can prevent productive work time from being eaten up — something
that’s more difficult to manage in face-to-face settings.

Employees can also ask themselves, “Have I been feeling more or less connected today?”
“Whom can I reach out to if I need support?” and “What relationships are the most
important to me?” Meanwhile, simple strategies like regular brief check-ins can do a lot
to alleviate employees’ feelings of loneliness. Though easy, this approach is extremely
effective: Research shows that employees feel the greatest sense of belonging at work
when their coworkers simply text or email to ask how they’re doing.

As we navigate endless Zoom meetings and new work/life challenges, let’s not
underestimate the value of small talk. Just because we might be working
remotely doesn’t mean that casual conversations are no longer important. In fact, they
may be more important than ever to help us seize daily opportunities to connect across
the virtual divide.

Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2021/03/remote-workers-need-small-talk-too