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    Better Small Talk: Talk to Anyone, Avoid Awkwardness, Generate Deep Conversations, and Make Real Friends
    Better Small Talk: Talk to Anyone, Avoid Awkwardness, Generate Deep Conversations, and Make Real Friends
    Better Small Talk: Talk to Anyone, Avoid Awkwardness, Generate Deep Conversations, and Make Real Friends
    Ebook161 pages2 hours

    Better Small Talk: Talk to Anyone, Avoid Awkwardness, Generate Deep Conversations, and Make Real Friends

    By Patrick King

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    Networking events suck, but they can suck less. What to say and when to say to be likable, connect, and make a memorable impression.


    Actionable and applicable verbal maneuvers for just about every phase of conversation. From hello to goodbye, with strangers or old friends, you'll learn how to simply go deeper.


    NO MORE: interview mode, awkward silence, or struggling to hold people’s attention.


    Better Small Talk is a unique read. Imagine the following situation: you've just put on your name tag, and you're approached by a stranger. What do you say? Nice weather today.No, we can do better than this. Learn better small talk to avoid awkwardness, put people at ease, and build real rapport.


    Learn to open people up without them even realizing it.


    Patrick King is an internationally bestselling author and social skills coach. His writing draws of a variety of sources, from scientific research, academic experience, coaching, and real life experience. He suffered for years as a shy introvert and managed to boil human interaction down to a science - first for himself, and now for you.


    You'll learn exact dialogues, responses, phrases, and questions to use.


    •How to tell captivating stories and what to actually focus on.


    •Four ways to warm yourself up and prepare for even the most unpredictable conversations.


    •Instantly setting a tone of friendship and openness with strangers.


    •Common and subtle conversational habits you need to stop right now


    Become someone who is magnetic and who can make new friends in any situation.


    Simple conversation is the gatekeeper to friendships, your dream career, romance, and overall happiness. The ability to connect with anyone is an underrated superpower. People will be more drawn to you without even knowing why, and never again people will people be bored talking to you. You’ll never run out of things to say when you master these conversation tactics.


    Make each conversation count by clicking the BUY NOW button at the top of the page.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPublishdrive
    Release dateApr 14, 2020
    ISBN9798636852582
    Better Small Talk: Talk to Anyone, Avoid Awkwardness, Generate Deep Conversations, and Make Real Friends

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    Reviews for Better Small Talk

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    • 5/5
      Great book for those looking for improve their small talk.
    • 5/5
      Best book on small talk ever read-great in depth breakdown ????

      1 person found this helpful

    Book preview

    Better Small Talk - Patrick King

    Friends

    Better Small Talk:

    Talk to Anyone, Avoid Awkwardness, Generate Deep Conversations, and Make Real Friends

    By Patrick King

    Social Interaction and Conversation Coach at www.PatrickKingConsulting.com

    As a FREE show of appreciation to my readers, I’ve got TWO great resources for you:

    >> CLICK HERE For The Flawless Interaction Checklist and Better Conversations Worksheet! <<

    The Checklist describes in-depth the 7 essential components to exceptional interactions and conversations between you and everyone from a stranger to your partner—and The Worksheet puts a few of those components to the test with practice exercises that will instantly upgrade any conversation.

    Learn how to:

    ·       Make people comfortable

    ·       Connect easily in any context

    ·       Develop killer eye contact

    ·       Prepare for any social situation

    ·       Appear as intuitive as a mind reader

    ·       Never run out of things to say

    ·       Practice and drill all of the above

    CLICK HERE to download your FREE copy now!

    Table of Contents

    Better Small Talk: Talk to Anyone, Avoid Awkwardness, Generate Deep Conversations, and Make Real Friends

    Table of Contents

    Chapter 1. Ugh, Small Talk

    The Small Talk Mindset

    A Childlike Exercise

    Your Conversation Résumé

    Conversational Stages

    Chapter 2. Initial Impressions

    Set the Tone

    Make the First Move

    Find Similarity

    Manufacture Connection

    Chapter 3. How to be Captivating

    A Life of Stories

    The 1:1:1 Method

    The Story Spine

    Inside Stories

    Ask for Stories

    Chapter 4. Keep It Flowing and Smooth

    Create Motion

    Think on Your Feet

    Helpful Acronyms

    Chapter 5. Go Deeper, Be Better

    The Oldest Trick in the Book

    Two Ears, One Mouth

    Ask Better Questions

    Chapter 6. Looking Inwards

    Build Thyself

    Branch Out

    You Only See Black and White

    Summary Guide

    Chapter 1. Ugh, Small Talk

    Human beings are a social species. Connection is crucial to happiness, staving off depression, and keeping healthy—literally. Various studies have shown that the effects of loneliness are akin to eating a poorer diet and exercising less, and can ultimately lead to the same place—an early death.

    It might sound a little melodramatic, but companionship is literally the way our brains have been built to survive and thrive.

    But for the purposes of this book’s topic, there’s an even more important wrinkle: the quality of our interactions matters as well, not just the quantity or presence of other people around us. Sounds like even our brains despise small talk.

    A 2010 study by Matthias Mehl had participants wandering around in their daily lives armed with a device that would record their audio environment over three days. The researchers analyzed how long each participant was in the presence of other people, and whether they were having casual conversations or were talking about more substantive matters. Basically, the aim was to capture what kinds of interactions these participants were taking part in, and the effect they had on their lives.

    At the same time, the researchers also measured people’s overall level of happiness and mental and physical well-being. They found a clear correlation between substantive and deep discussions and greater well-being and happiness. It’s something you’ve probably suspected or even felt before, but being vulnerable and open with others is a deeply satisfying activity on many levels.

    As for small talk, that which is the opposite of substance and depth? Well, it drew a negative correlation with well-being and happiness, meaning it made people less happy. There you have it; real evidence that small talk is something to be avoided, or at least transition out of as quickly as possible.

    Researcher Arthur Aron conducted a study in 1997, in which he paired participants who didn’t know each other and gave them a list of fairly personal questions to ask. Although the questions were not offensively intrusive, they were more than just small talk. (Would you like to be famous and how? Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die? What is your most terrible memory? How do you feel about your relationship with your mother?)

    Aron found that the participants responded to these deep dives with openness and intimacy. The participants didn’t feel that the questions, as personal as they were, necessarily invaded their privacy or weakened them in any way. Instead, these questions encouraged honesty, more emotional fluency, and sincerity in the respondents. They felt closer to the other participants, who were complete strangers before the experiment. Future iterations of this study were given names such as How to fall in love with 36 questions because of the powerful effects it had on the relationships between the participants, which were previously nonexistent.

    You probably already know deep in your bones what these two studies laid out: delving more deeply or intensely in our communications can create positive results far more swiftly than one might think. Now the question remains: how can we actually do that? In this book, I want to provide a framework, from beginning to end, about how to engage people more effectively and move beyond small talk. We’ll start even before the interaction begins with how you should prepare yourself, and move on through all the stages of small talk to arrive at something more meaningful.

    At the prospect of reading this book, you might be overly excited about throwing yourself into the midst of a conversation and seeing what you can accomplish. After all, you’re reading this book for a reason, and motivation can make you overeager—but rushing in would be a mistake for the time being. It would be akin to running into battle without your shield, sword, or even pants.

    The Small Talk Mindset

    There’s more to conversation than thinking off the cuff and creating witty banter out of nothing at all. Very few of us are capable of doing that on a consistent basis, and what’s more sustainable, easy, and practical is preparing for a conversation beforehand.

    To be specific, you’re not preparing for specific conversations like they are job interviews—rather, you are priming yourself to be able to shine in social exchanges in general. There’s a distinct difference between the two. When you prepare for conversations, you’ll find being witty much more available and even easy.

    So the first step to witty banter and small talk is to get ready psychologically—so you’re not caught with your pants down in meeting someone new. What exactly does this mean? Think about when you just wake up and your voice is gravelly and incomprehensible. Your thoughts are unorganized and swirling, and anything that comes out of your mouth is likely to be responded to with a …what did you say?

    When you’re only half-awake, you’re caught off guard when you have to respond to anything, and you have a lack of focus and awareness. This is our social status quo—how we normally move through and navigate the world. So warming up mentally is about beginning to stretch and gingerly flex our social muscles so we’re ready for action.

    If you’re out at a bar or networking event, you only have one shot at making the right impression. If you fall flat on your face, as will inevitably happen from time to time, guess what? That was your one shot at the goal—will you make the most of it?

    Recall that as children, we were always admonished to never talk to strangers. This well-meaning instruction might have served us well in our childhood, when we were likely to be gullible prey to sly criminals. Stranger danger was a real thing to be avoided.

    In public places, we plug our ears with headphones and glue our faces to our phones, preferring to keep our interactions with people we don’t know to the bare minimum. Is this habit still serving us well? Likely not if our goal is to become better at conversation and charm. We should quickly let go of this tendency because, as adults, it only serves to keep us isolated from others. It locks us in a social prison of our own making, and it keeps us socially cold for occasions when we need to be on. At the very least, it leaves us woefully unprepared for engaging with people, exposed as if we were ambushed in the middle of the night.

    A 2014 study by Epley and Schroeder divided commuters on trains and buses into three groups—the first was instructed to interact with a stranger near them, the second to keep to themselves, and the third to commute as normal. Even though participants in each group predicted feeling more positive if they kept to themselves, the outcome of the experiment was the opposite. At the end of their ride, the group of commuters who connected with a stranger reported a more positive experience than those who remained disconnected. It seems we feel that only awkwardness will ensue with a stranger, when instead an unexpected connection creates good vibrations.

    In support of the above findings, another study by Sandstrom and Dunn (2013) revealed how being our usual, efficiency-driven selves while buying our daily cup of coffee is robbing us of an opportunity to be happier. While we routinely rush through the transaction without so much as a smile, the study found that people who smiled and engaged in a brief conversation with the barista experienced more positive feelings than those who stuck to the impersonal, efficient approach.

    These studies have two main findings. First, we tend to think or assume we’re better off keeping to ourselves than having short interactions with strangers. Second, we’re wrong about the first point. The simple act of engaging people in short bursts has been shown to make us happier and more inclined to be social, and it will also help us mentally and psychologically warm up to be our best in conversations and small talk no matter the context.

    We need to engage in more short interactions—or what researcher Steven Handel calls ten-second relationships—with others, because they have the potential to boost our moods, change our perspectives, and warm us up socially.

    Of course, though we may now recognize the benefits of short interactions, it’s still understandable how the thought of striking up a conversation with a total stranger may be uninviting or even repulsive to those of us who aren’t social butterflies. We feel ill-equipped to engage in fruitful social interactions, so we prefer the loneliness of keeping to ourselves. How do we counter this and warm ourselves up for routinely conversing with others? How do we get into the habit of being interested in people and build enough social confidence so we can turn that interest into meaningful interactions?

    Well, that’s part of the logic behind only trying for ten-second interactions. Hey, you can make it one second (Hello there!) or

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