The Art of Small Talks

“how are you”
“the weather is so nice today”
“you look great today!”


Imagine you’re meeting a person that you have never met before, but you are planning to work with them together in the future. When the time and date has come where you meet them in a coffeeshop, you sit down together and you start with:

“Do you think the universe has prepared something for us out there?”

You went deep. You went hard with the conversation starter.

Imagine the look on their faces. Their discomfort of wanting to quickly get out of there and stay away as far from you as possible because you’re such a freak and out of nowhere you throw a conversation so deep they even don’t know where did that coming from or how to respond such a delicate, profound question.

That’s where small talks matters.

You don’t just go around asking people and create a complicated conversations with the person you had just met. That is just simply uncomfortable and somewhat… inappropriate.

That’s what I wanted to talk about.

Small talks.

It is something that we always took for granted. And the thing about small talks is that sometimes we think it's not important.. and sometimes we overlook it. But the fact is small talks do matters. Matters for you to create a pleasant impression towards strangers and acquaintances, matters for you to create a comfortable enough situation to get on to the next level. When your small talk is smooth, people will think you’re a cool person. On the contrary if your small talks is too boring, people will find you boring. Or if it’s too vulgar or straightforward, people will find you disgusting, even.

It’s that first few minutes of talks about small things that creates an impression about you, before you get on to business. It's that first few minutes of small talks that determine if you can get on and talk about other things.

Extroverts, or outgoing people, however, would think that this is probably an easy peasy matter because you know, they have it in their blood. Small talks just "happens" for them. It's that easy.

“Ah.. where can small talks get wrong. It’s just a simple, easy conversation starter.”

Easy for you to say, but the fact is that.. some of us doesn’t require that skill, enough for us to open up a conversation to people.

Especially introverts.

Introverts find it hard to look people in the eye, let alone start a conversation of small talks. We don't know how much is the boundaries. We don't know exactly what is considered small talk.. which are not. We have so much in our mind we can't pour out, and small talk is just another hurdle for us to be thought about. It's stressful.

I'm not saying all introverts do so... Of course some are able to create small talks. But the fact that most of us can't is true.

I can't do small talks.

I'm the type of person to be like.. hey we meet to talk about work right? so get on with it, straight to the point, talk about the things that makes us meet at the first place and be done with it.

Some don't. Some do small talks first.

Some slowly drinks coffee while talk about their families, or movies, or what's trending, or just joking around to break the ice.

I, I don't understand. I just can't do that.

It's like... why? how?

Sometimes I get a little jealous of my friend, Mirna, who can make strangers feel comfortable around her with her jokes and her outgoing personality.

People actually like her, and people actually want to be her friend. Not to just meet and talk about business then boom. Go.

Small talks are also used for when you need someone's favour, and you try to set the 'mood' so he/she is comfortable enough to give you that favour. It's part of the persuading process.

The chances of that person giving you a favour is much more higher if you initiate small talks first before go straight to the point.

Easy example, asking money from your parents.
You don't go in front of them and just go "mom, I need $5. Please give me?"
You go subtle. You go with "wow mom, you look beautiful today"

You get what I mean.

You see, it's a skill. It's an art.

It matters in so many kinds of situation yet people just overlook it.
Why?

Why didn't anyone teach this in classes.
They should have.

They should consider this particular art as one of the subject in Public Relation or Psychology classes, on how to analysis a person's behaviour/personality and determine what kind of small talks would be a perfect fit to create a great first impression for you. It's a serious matter! And so many people are willing to know how. Yet it is overlooked because you know, "it's easy".

You know. It's not.
















Just a thought.