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Small Talk Mastery – Audio

Hi, I’m AJ, welcome to this month’s VIP lesson. A while back, a few years ago, I was playing golf in Hawaii. Went to a golf course by myself. When you play golf by yourself usually the golf course staff will pair you, will put you with other people. They don’t like to have just single players because it’s too slow. So this time I was put with one other guy, just one other guy. So I met this guy at the beginning of playing, just before the first hole and, you know as usual I said hi, how are you? My name’s AJ. He told me his name. And then, of course, we started talking, just small talk.

Small talk, of course, is that kind of very casual talk we have with strangers usually, where we’re talking about very small topics and usually it’s things like, what’s your name? Where are you from? What do you do for a job? People talk about the weather, very basic, kind of surface topics, they’re not deep. And so I began to do that usual kind of small talk. I asked him where he was from. Hi, where are you from? Oh, I’m from Texas. I said ah right, okay. So what are you doing here in Hawaii? Oh, just on vacation, my family and I we’re just on vacation.

I said okay, oh well, so what do you do? He said oh, (I can’t remember the name of the company), but he said I work, I’m a software engineer. I work on software systems for my company. And I said oh okay, hmm, yeah, ah and then he asked me maybe a couple questions. What do you do? I’m an English teacher. I teach English online. Where are you from, etc. same stuff? But here’s the problem, after just a few sentences every topic just died. It was very, kind of this awkward feeling. Maybe you know this awkward feeling, right, this kind of uncomfortable social feeling when you meet someone new and there’s no connection. You’re trying to connect with it. You’re trying to start some kind of conversation. You’re trying to create some kind of connection and it’s not happening. It feels very, kind of uncomfortable and awkward.

The problem is that, and the problem was, that one round of golf takes about four to four and a half hours, so I was stuck with this guy for four and a half hours right, but every topic died. It would just be a few sentences, you know, what do you do? Oh, I’m a software engineer at this company. Ah, and then nothing. And it would die because there was no connection, I don’t know anything about software engineering really or the company he worked for, so I didn’t really know anything to say so I would ah and then the topic would die. And then I would try again, oh you’re from Texas, okay, um, where in Texas are you from? I’m from Austin. Oh, Austin right that’s got the university, I’ve been to Austin it’s a nice town. And he’d say yeah, yeah it’s pretty nice, and it would die.

Oh, I don’t know a lot about Austin, I didn’t know what else to say so the conversation would stop again in that kind of awkward silence where you’re sitting there, you don’t know what to say. Well, this kept happening again and again and eventually I just stopped trying, it was so awkward and difficult. And there was no feeling of connection and honestly the round of golf was not so fun, it was just a little weird feeling because I couldn’t get any connection with this guy at all. So that’s an example of really terrible small talk.

On the other hand, about a year ago, as you probably know my friend and I, Joe, walked the Camino de Santiago in Spain; Joe from LearnRealEnglish.com. We walked the Camino de Santiago in Spain, which is a walking path through Spain and it took us 32 days, so every day we were walking on this path. Well Joe is a master of small talk and every day he would start chatting, start talking with new people, with strangers, because during the Camino we were constantly meeting people or walking along and you’re meeting other people who are also walking. As you go through towns you, of course, meet the people who live in the towns, the people running the restaurants or the hotels right? And Joe is a small talk master, so every time he would meet someone he’d start talking, da-da-da-da. But, usually with Joe the small talk did not die, he would keep talking and talking and talking and talking and he would talk to people for hours and hours and hours.

We would be sitting at a dinner and da-da-da-da-da and just keep going and going and going, and I’m sitting there like wow, how does he do this? How is he doing it? As a result, the great benefit of this is that by the end of the Camino he had several new friends and luckily I did too, but especially Joe, he’d really made some great friends during that one month period. The big reason is that he was so good at small talk that he made connections with so many people.

So I started thinking about this, I’m like wow, why on one hand was my Hawaii golf experience so awkward and difficult, kind of boring and in general, honestly, I usually struggle with small talk during most of my life. I’m not good at it. Now I love deep conversations. So I love chatting with friends or even someone I’ve just met about deep meaningful topics and I can talk for hours and hours with someone about that. But, the problem is, usually when you meet a stranger you don’t immediately begin to talk about a very serious topic right? This is the purpose of small talk, it gets things started, and I’ve never been good at it. I’ve always had this idea that I hated small talk, whereas Joe, on the other hand has done it very well most of his life.

So Joe has all these fun chats and meets people constantly and makes these instant connections. So I started thinking, what’s the secret? I got tired of it because I wanted to connect with people more, strangers, and more quickly like him. I was really kind of inspired by that and so I went out and just started reading lots and lots and lots of books on this topic. Books about small talk. Books about creating quick connections with people. I’m quite good at creating deep connections with people, I’m not so good at creating quick ones and many people have this problem, I know, it’s not just me.

And when English is not your native language it can be even tougher to get this small talk going, to keep it going so it doesn’t just die. So I started reading all of these books, reading all about small talk and different techniques for connection and then I began to realize, ahh, realize that oh wow, Joe is naturally using many of these techniques and strategies. Now Joe just naturally does it, it’s kind of his personality. I don’t’ know where he learned it or how, probably just growing up and it’s just part of his personality. But I didn’t learn these skills, and so it was always difficult for me.

Now I’m better at it, especially if I think about it, if I really want to connect with people, if I want to have a good experience with small talk now I know how to do it, so I’m going to share that with you, because especially as an English learner, many, many of your conversations will be small talk. One of the most common questions I get from people online, in person is, how do I make native speaker friends? How do I make friends with Americans? How do I make friends with Canadians? Even people who are living in America, they still have a hard time making friends with Americans or British, if they’re living in England, whatever.

And they struggle with this and I think the main reason is that they don’t know how to do small talk well. So they may go out, they’re meeting Americans maybe every day, but just like my golf experience they’re these super short conversations that just die. Hi, where are you from? I’m from Thailand. Oh okay and that’s all, right. No friend, no connection it’s done. Next day you meet someone else you have the same thing. Hi, what’s your name? Where are you from? What do you do? And then it does.

All right, so let’s talk about some of these strategies now so that you can make faster connections which lead to friendships, because see small talk is the icebreaker. This is what I did not understand before. I always thought oh, I hate small talk it’s so shallow. It’s not meaningful, I don’t want to do it. But it’s important because it breaks the ice. Imagine a big piece of ice, a big block of ice like this right, and it’s all closed, it’s hard. If we want to break that ice what do we have to do? Maybe we get like a little piece of metal and we (bam) we hit it and it breaks open. It opens up. It breaks open. Well, this is sort of the same image with a person, with a stranger.

When you first meet people it’s like they’re a block of ice, they’re kind of closed, maybe a little cold. It doesn’t mean they’re unfriendly, but it’s just, we’re all naturally this way with strangers. Some of us are very much this way and some are more open. But still, there’s always this kind of icy closed feeling. So small talk opens that up, it’s an icebreaker. The whole point of it is to get the person to be more open, to start talking, to feel that connection, then you have a chance for more meaningful friendship, deeper topics, better conversations, but the small talks a necessary step so we need to be good at it.

Let’s talk about it. I’ve talked about this in some past lessons before, but I want to focus completely on the topic and give you very specific strategies and techniques in this lesson this month. In fact, in the commentary I will give you exact phrases and sentences to use to say for small talk.

Here in the main lesson let’s just talk about some of the major strategies, the kind of main ideas. In the commentary I’ll give you the specific phrases to use. Okay…

Number one, how do you start the conversation?

You see someone, you’re sitting in a coffee shop you look over, there’s someone next to you. They look like they’re nice. They look interesting. You would like to talk. You would like to practice your English. You would like to meet them. How do you do it? Well, there’s different techniques, you could just say hi, I’m so and so maybe, but they might be a little closed to that. I’ve got a better technique for you and it works. Joe uses this technique all the time. After I read this technique I realized, oh my God, this is what Joe always does, it’s so effective.

This technique is called prop questions. Questions about props or really, questions about a prop. What’s a prop? A prop is just an object, it’s just a thing. It comes from the world of theater and movies, movie making and theater. In theater, a prop is any object that an actor uses or interacts with, so it could be a cup, it could be a chair or a table, it could be a book; anything the actor picks up, talks about or just uses. So it’s just an object, a prop is an object. So a question about an object, let me give you an example. This is one Joe uses all the time if someone’s wearing a hat.

Let’s say they got a hat with a sports team logo on it, it’s got a sports team. So Joe very, very often, he’ll start a conversation by asking a question about the hat. Let’s say it’s a logo, it has the logo of the Golden State Warriors; they’re a basketball team. So he might say, he’ll see the hat and say oh, are you a fan of the Warriors? Probably they are they’re wearing the hat. So they’ll say yeah, yeah and then he’ll start asking questions about the hat. Oh, where’d you get that hat it’s cool I like it? They’ll start giving information about where they bought the hat. Then he’ll ask questions about the Warriors, oh, have you been to a Warriors game? Who’s your favorite Warriors player? See the prop, the object gets the conversation going and moving. You could do the same if they’re wearing a shirt, again, especially with guys, with men, sports things are really great to do.

If they’ve got a Manchester United shirt on you can ask oh, are you a fan of Manchester United? Where’d you get that shirt it’s really nice? Who’s your favorite player? Did you see that game against Chelsea, on and on and on? I think this is one reason men, guys, often follow sports. It’s the reason I follow sports sometimes actually, because honestly, I’m not into watching sports. I like doing them, don’t really care so much about watching them. But I follow them anyway because it’s such a great small talk topic, so I can talk to people about it, especially men, especially guys.

What about women or what about guys who are not wearing a sports thing? Well, it doesn’t matter what it is, if you’re in a coffee shop if they have a computer, especially if it’s a computer different than yours or a cool cell phone that’s different, ask about that. You can say oh excuse me is that the new Galaxy 9 phone? And they’ll say yes or they’ll say no, and then if they say no you say oh, well what is it then, what is that it looks kind of cool and you just start asking questions about it? Is it fast? Oh, do you like the phone? What are your favorite apps on it? It’s just an excuse, just an icebreaker. It gets them to open up. It gets them comfortable with talking more, and you can ask lots and lots of questions about the prop.

See, one of the reasons this works is that the prop is not so personal. If you ask people personal questions immediately, you’ve never met them and you immediately, you know, where do you live? Where are you from? What do you do? Sometimes it makes people a little nervous, like why are you asking me these personal questions? I don’t know who you are. They get a little worried like, are you safe? Are you a safe person? Especially if you’re a man asking this of a woman or a woman asking a man, then it’s even worse. But if you ask about a price, you’re just asking about their hat or their shirt or their computer or their phone, it feels much more safe. It’s easier for them to relax and talk about it. You get them talking you break the ice, right.

You can do it with clothing. With women sometimes this is great, if they have a nice shirt that you like. You can do it with jewelry, like they got a necklace that looks kind of interesting or a ring it doesn’t matter. You can even talk about like their hair, especially for women. Oh, I love your… I see women do this all the time, I hear them do it. Oh, I love your haircut your hairstyle’s so nice and then they start asking, where’d you get it done? Who did your hair? Oh, where’s that shop? They just start asking questions about that, just easy ways. For a man I wouldn’t do that to a woman, ask about their hair, it feels like maybe you’re trying to get a date or something, so it’d be safer to just say I like your shirt, nice shoes or something like that.

So prop questions. What else, what’s another technique you can use for small talk?

Another one is, I call it rambling with bait, ramble with bait.

This is kind of step two after the prop questions. The prop questions get things moving and going and you’re asking them lots of questions. You’re getting them to talk more, get them to feel comfortable. But next, you need to talk too but you want to talk in a way that will make the conversation continue so it doesn’t die. So you ramble with bait. To ramble means to talk on and on and on, to talk without stopping. And it has the idea that you’re just talking about lots of little details. Now if you do it too much it can be boring, but I’m going to tell you a specific technique that is very powerful and useful, especially for small talk. You ramble with bait; bait is the important part of this.

What’s bait? Bait is something you use to catch something. If you want to catch a fish you have a hook and you put a worm on it. The worm is the bait, it’s something that the fish want, so you throw it in the water and the fish come, sees the worm and then you catch them. Well, you’re going to ramble, you’re going to talk a lot but you’re going to put bait into your talk. Bait means, things that the other person might be interested in. There are two kinds of bait, two things you want to talk about a lot when you’re talking in small talk.

1. Values

Values are basically reasons, the reasons you do things right. So let’s say you skateboard, I skateboarding. I just started skateboarding so if I’m talking to someone I might start talking about skateboarding. Yeah, you know, I just started skateboarding and I’ve got this new cool skateboard, I like it a lot. That’s not good small talk, because the other person might not care about skateboarding. If they don’t care about skateboarding they’re just going to say ah, okay and it will die. So I need to give bait. I need to talk about values, the reasons I skateboard. Yeah, I just got this new skateboard and I love skateboarding because it keeps me active. I love getting outdoors. It keeps me active. Helps me feel a little more young. It improves my fitness and I just like staying active and outdoors. It’s really important to me and I don’t want to, as I get older I don’t want to just become tired and lazy.

See, all those things I was saying about I don’t want to be tired and lazy, I want to age well, I could talk about, I love the excitement of it. It doesn’t matter really, the reasons, but I throw in a lot of reasons. This is important because they might not care about skateboarding, probably they won’t, but the values, the reasons, those are more common. So they might care about aging well. They might care about being outdoors. They might care about being active. So that’ll give them topics to talk about, even if they don’t care about skateboarding, they still might say oh yeah, I don’t know about skateboarding but I also like to be active. I do yoga and I love doing yoga because it keeps me active and keeps me feeling more energetic and younger, whatever.

You see how that’s… so when you’re talking in small talk, constantly be talking about the reasons, the values. I’ve mentioned this in a previous lesson, but I want to emphasize it again because it’s so important. You create connection with values not with activities. See, we tend to think we connect with people because we do the same thing. You skateboard, I skateboard so we’ll have a connection. Not so much. If you skateboard and I skateboard yes, we can talk about it for a little while, but if we don’t share the reasons, the values then there’s really no deeper connection and the conversation will die.

1. The second bait you’re going to use I call it, mystery.

You’re going to add mystery. You’re going to mention things. You’re going to mention little details, but you won’t say anything more. The idea is just to get them curious. Let’s say we’re talking about pain, like back pain or something. Like they’re saying oh yeah, my back hurts. Maybe they just stretch and say, oh my back’s kind of hurting, I’m sitting. I might say something like, oh yeah, I know what you mean. You know one time when I saw the Dalai Lama speak, I had to sit there for like six hours and oh, my back was killing me. It was so painful. So I’m talking about back pain and everything, but I added a little bit of mystery. I just mentioned seeing the Dalai Lama. I didn’t talk a lot of details about it, I just put it in there. It’s a little mystery. It’s a little detail, but I’m trying to again, bait them to get them curious so they’ll start asking me questions.

You have to do this with many different things. Maybe they don’t care about the Dalai Lama, then they would ignore that which is fine, but I’m going to put other things in my conversation that might get them interested and eventually something will interest them and they’ll say oh, oh you saw the Dalai Lama? Boom, now we have a conversation that’s about maybe a topic somewhat deeper.

All right, that’s enough for all the general strategies. In the commentary we’re going to talk about specific phrases, very specific things you can say to start small talk and to get the small talk going, and then to make the small talk deeper and create true friendships.

All right, I’ll see you in the commentary. I’ll see you in the interactive lesson. In the interactive lesson I’ve got a cool excerpt section from a book called Charisma On Command, which is a fantastic book about communication, small talk and connection.

See you in the other lessons, bye for now.