The Bloggers With The Most To Say
How good are you at 'small talk'?
Small talks at the right time can add immense charm to your personality.
It can earn for you the label of being caring,sensitive and very friendly.
Besides it's good virtues, being repetitive in your small talk approach can make people make fun of you.
I am yet to master this trait.
How about you?
How good are you at 'small talk'??
Share with all your views on 'small talk'
Feel free to add your views on my article at 'The Dialogue'.
It can earn for you the label of being caring,sensitive and very friendly.
Besides it's good virtues, being repetitive in your small talk approach can make people make fun of you.
I am yet to master this trait.
How about you?
How good are you at 'small talk'??
Share with all your views on 'small talk'
Feel free to add your views on my article at 'The Dialogue'.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Sebastian on -
I'm incredibly good.
It's all about being actually interested in the other person.
I know a lot of shit gets bandied around on this particular subject, but being interested is _the_ only way.
Obviously, communicating well comes a close second -- don't interrupt, don't look away, don't fidget, etc. But mostly, you must actually be curious about the other person.
And to be curious, you have to be inquisitive. You must be able to ask probing questions on a subject you may never have heard of before.
Basically, to be good at small talk and not just glib/hollow/vacuous, you need to be smart and quite literate.
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Permalink Reply by Sebastian on
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Synopsis: If you find someone/some topic boring, you will be awful at small talk. Everything must be interesting to you.
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Permalink Reply by Harper and Beatrix on -
i agree in part with sebastian. being interested works, but so does being interesting.
i had a professor in college who would tell a story about a student who met a mildly famous author. When the author asked the student what he was into, he said, "Uh. . . I like basketball?" The author walked away, but not before imparting this piece of advice: "You know, you have to make yourself interesting."
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Permalink Reply by Sebastian on
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Hurgh...
Not sure about being interesting.
If everyone went around being interesting, not a lot would get done. Plus, no one would talk to each other; everyone would be waiting for other people to come and listen to their great tales...
Plus, if someone's interested in _you_, then whatever you say is interesting by definition.
I bet you're American :P
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Permalink Reply by Harper and Beatrix on
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100% american and about 85% interesting.
i actually have a job that nearly interests nearly everyone i ever meet, so i spend a lot of time talking about it. it gets kind of boring, and i answer the same questions over and over, but i (and all the guys at work) always complain even more when we've been confronted by someone who says, "oh, you're a ________? we'll i work at a bank, and . . . ."
in all seriousness, though, being interesting doesn't mean you have great tales; it means you're passionate about something. anything. maybe i don't need to tell you about the time i witnessed a weird bomb scare at charles de gaulle or the time i was at a party with a bunch of famous people. i like to make soup and i'm kind of into making tiny loaves of quick bread lately, i just learned to knit cables, i want to learn to speak spanish, i'm rereading midnight in the garden of good and evil, sometime soon i'd like to take a train out to see the fall leaves, and i've been watching glee and i'm still undecided as to whether a television program can survive if it's based solely on characters who are purely stereotypical caricatures.
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Permalink Reply by Harper and Beatrix on
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also, if you aren't interesting, you'll have nothing to say when some "interested" party asks who's your favorite astronaut or what you did last weekend or what's your opinion of universal healthcare.
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Permalink Reply by Sebastian on
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Hehe, well... you know what they say. Everyone is different.
I think the trick is certainly more in finding other things interesting, rather than the opposite.
Very few people are actually BORING -- as in, very few people actually do NOTHING. Even then, there's probably something interesting about WHY they are doing nothing.
The trick in being interested is finding out what someone has to say about themselves.
When I was attacking 'interestingness', I was more going at those that proffer stories or tales without any prompting... over and over...
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Permalink Reply by Oats on -
I'm horrible at small talk. I used to have no problem just going up to even random people and making small talk about whatever they were interested in and when tables were turned, like why am I talking to them I'd have a unique reply that was honest and genuine and usually slightly comical. But then it went back to them.
Small talk is about the dialog between two people, not a one way conversation. In order for it to really work, both people have to be somewhat good at taking non-verbal cues and maintaining conversation.
I don't know what the hell has happened to me. I've been sucked into a black hole of introversion and find it very awkward to make small talk. It's not that I'm not interested, it's that I come across as not being interested via gestures or lack thereof. So usually the result is that I'm blown off before I even have a chance to say anything. Something I need to work on.
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Permalink Reply by Emily Rose on -
I'm horrible at it. I think it's because I'm shy with people I don't know so I just don't talk. If people have tips on how to overcome this fact, I'd love to hear them haha
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Permalink Reply by Emma Seaman on -
I'm nothing special when it comes to small talk. Like Emily said, I tend to get quite shy when I first meet people, especially when I can't read them. A couple of glasses of wine and then I'm more than happy to chat to anyone about any and everything.
Hoorah for wine!
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Permalink Reply by Jamie on -
I'm not very good at it. Once I get comfortable, it's a different story. Or if I'm meeting new people with someone I already know, I'm a bit more at ease. I guess it all depends on how I'm feeling that day though. Sometimes I'm just in a very talky mood!
It also depends on how many glasses of wine I've had hahah
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Permalink Reply by David Stehle on -
If you need practice at breaking the ice, get yourself a dog and head to the local dog park. You’ll find yourself engaged in small talk in no time.
Then you may start to wonder how you can get people to stop talking to you constantly. Dogs are great conversation starters because they automatically relax you. And with a dog, you instantly have something in common with the other person - a love for animals.
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