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How to turn small talk into smart conversation
How to get beyond small talk
Ask open-ended questions that invite people to tell stories, rather than one-word answers.
Instead of "How was your day?" try, "What did you do today?" Other open-ended questions to try:
- "What's your story?"
- "What's the strangest thing about where you grew up?"
- "What's the most interesting thing that happened at work today?"
- "How'd you end up in your line of work?"
- "What was the best part of your weekend?"
- "What are you looking forward to this week?"
- "Who do you think is the luckiest person in this room?"
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Pre-introduce yourself
Think about the people you would like to get to know and then carve out time to accomplish that goal:
- A few before the conference, make a 'priority wish list' of people you’d like to meet.
- Send those people an email introducing yourself and asking to meet; if possible, get an introduction from a mutual friend or colleague.
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Second-person self-talk and increased performance
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Research on self-talk for endurance
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- Customized self-talk for athletes. Framing self-statements in a positive light tend to be encouraging and actionable. For example, changing "keep grinding" to "I (You) can keep going."
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Small talk
Not everyone enjoys small talk. It is not that they are not comfortable talking, but one-on-one, small talk remains an issue.
Small talk precedes big talk in the normal course of human af...
Small talk has meaning
Anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski noted in 1923 that a great deal of talk "does not serve any purpose of communicating ideas" but "to establish bonds of personal union." He also said that small talk was merely a way to fill the silence.
He was wrong. Small talk is not just for those seeking companionship. It enacts and reinforces social roles in a whole range of social, commercial, and professional settings.
Speech operates on two levels
- Speech communicates information or ideas. It is the semantic content of speech.
- On another level, talking is a social behavior. Every speech does something. It reassures, acknowledges, nurtures, enjoins, rejects, dominates, encourages, or just fill an awkward silence.