How to Learn Small Talk Fast

Anna, my advanced level student, doesn’t like to do small talk with work colleagues because she prefers being direct.
At work, she usually has at least one conference call meeting a week with international colleagues and partners. She doesn’t understand why every time she calls them, they always have to begin by ‘warming up’ the conversation with some small talk, before launching into a business discussion. She also has to travel from Paris to eastern European countries several times a year for live conferences and to collaborate with colleagues too.
She explained to me that she often struggles to use small talk when at home or abroad. For some reason, it’s still uncomfortable and unnatural to try to do.
Sometimes when she travels, she arrives at the company HQ in a new country and has a great productive meeting in the morning. However, right after the serious discussions, she finds people around her are very eager to speak about social conversations outside of business. She then just holds her breath and impatiently counts the minutes (in her head) before she can exit the room to avoid embarrassment.
The same thing when she’s at lunch in the cafeteria. She sometimes spends most of her lunchtime sitting by herself with her sandwich looking around suspiciously to make sure no one would approach her to speak English. Hot sweats and a dry throat can break out whenever anyone comes near to have a chat.
It feels like she has a tape on her mouth to stop her from talking.
She can’t speak even though it’s just small talk and nothing serious.
I told her the same thing I’ll say to you now.
The main reason why it’s so difficult for her to connect with people outside of the business context is because she’s not very interested in finding out more about these people at all! But more important than that she’s not really motivated to share something about her life outside of work with these people.
We all usually want to ‘go through the motions’ just so you can get what you want. In this case for her it was to have a successful meeting. It’s clear why we behave like that because we don’t expect to have a long-term relationship with these individuals so why invest time getting to know more about them? And…we are all very self-conscious that our speaking level is very bad anyway so why should we embarrass ourselves?
…but if you make a little effort, it could end up being time well spent. Not only will you feel less alone at any event but it’s a gateway to insider info when executed properly.
The key to beginning to have great small talk conversations is:
Find a shared common interest first with the other person for the conversation to work. This instantly helps build rapport.

Let me explain.

You need to find out something else from the other person that is of interest to them and you. And then continue talking about that topic for as long as you need to.
So how do you do that?
You need to be deliberate at the beginning by asking questions that reveal very quickly if you have some things or experiences in common.
You-‘Have you got any children?’
Your colleague-‘Yes, I have one, little Phoebe is two years old.’
You-‘That’s interesting I have one too, he’s three years old starting nursery school this year. When do children in your country start going to Nursery’?
So, you see, finding something in common allows you to continue the conversation easily.

The simplest way to remember to start small talk conversations is using Question words: Who, what, why, when, how, where, which, whom, whose.
Or the auxiliary verbs: Do, Have, and Is.
1. learn to ask the questions in the conversation as soon as possible
2. Have a list of go-to general topics that you can use frequently.
Here are some examples of topics you can talk about:
Yourself, the weather, your children and family, your job, your surroundings or place/city you are in right now, somewhere you visited before, business, the food at the event you are in, someone you both know in common, a topic or hobby of common interest.
The fastest way to start small talk is by using one question word, ‘What.’
The question word ‘What’ can get you speaking in almost any context or subject you can imagine straight away.

For example:

What’s your name?
What can I get you?
What’s the reason for your visit?
What’s your job?
What lovely weather, isn’t it?
What’s your favorite film?
What do you think about the conference?
So, if you really want to start small talk straight away, start by asking questions with the word ‘What’! today.