It's intriguing how often small talk questions and issues surface on Gen-Y blogs--and that's not the only place! There's even a Small Talk Daily. People across all generations struggle with small talk. I've been hired by execs in their forties and fifties for the sole purpose of teaching them how to do small talk. One exec in particular, a CFO at a nationally known firm, told me that his promotion meant that he would now have to be attending public events including cocktail parties, where small talk was needed. He'd been chided by his wife because of his bystanding--and he was quite willing to pay an immoral fee to learn how to do small talk. It had become a public relations issue for him.
But small-talk skills come up just about every week in the work setting. And they're an imperative for network building, influence management, team building, employee assimilation and even managing people. They are also phenomenally useful for initiating long-term client relationships.
Small talk, however, is profoundly misunderstood. To get at that misunderstanding, I distinguish between small talk and gab. Gab goes nowhere, whereas small talk is intentional.
gab--to talk in an idle rapid, thoughtless manner; chatter. . . . he gabbed about his six kids. . . Edna Ferber referred to a gossip who had just heard something new. . . "She'll probably gab about it tomorrow until I have to shut her up."
In a business setting, gab refers to talk that is meant to show verbal facility, somehow capture attention, entertain a colleague or client, or disable shyness. Human beings always seek to be in command of their actions. Gab is a very common yet unsophisticated form of talk to express personal control of a situation, when reality may well be the opposite. If you pay close attention to initial business conversations, you'll recognize that gab is far more prevalent than small talk.
In contrast, small talk, is highly intentional. It is driven by purpose, and often strategic. For example, in client relations, effective small talk is key to identifying common experience, surfacing thinking styles and decision processes, detailing fundamental values and piquing interest.
It's rare for a professional to be aware of the different formats of normal conversation. In today's world, where skills in complex communication are necessary for business, there are three forms of talk: cliche, initiatory (small talk), and conversational leadership. To get to conversational leadership, you'll always have to begin with cliche talk.
When I'm in consulting mode and skip cliche talk, the nonverbals nearly always stop me. They take the shape of something like, "Dan, aren't you at least going to say hello before we start all this work?" I usually laugh, and do the requisite cliche talk. In a recent conversation about these skills, a CIO told me that senior marketing people at IBM have become artistic in the use of these language technologies. It's key to their success.
Cliche talk, those first few statements of low-level greeting includes such normal comments as, "Hello, how are you? How've you been?" or "Hi, what's new?" Cliche talk signals to the other person that your attitude is open and friendly, and, that if the situation permits, you're available for conversation.
The other end of small talk, conversational leadership, comprises sets of interpersonal and team skills such as problem solving, decision making, innovation and learning.
In the coming weeks I'll explore the small talk format, illustrate its uses and show, in a number of blogs, how to transition to conversational leadership. Eventually there'll be at least one white paper on small talk with protocols and scripts that can be readily retranslated into whatever small talk situations you may face.
So, what questions do you have on small talk?