Matt Abrahams: recommendation

Transcript context

…Great. We went way off-topic, but let's get back to the agenda at hand, which is let's talk about specific situations and advice you have for getting better at these. So maybe we start with small talk and there's one that I love and I find so important and so subtle, which is have comparable levels of disclosure. And the question basically is how do we get better at small talk? And here's one technique. Yeah, so let me get to that point in a second because that's a more refined point than some general principles. When it comes to small talk, many people dread small talk, they feel really awkward about it. I think small talk has a bad reputation, needs to be rebranded. I think a lot of big things happen in small talk. We learn about ourselves and others. We form and foster relationships. I challenge everybody listening to think about some of their friends, our closest friends. How did you meet them? Probably some component of small talk played a role, especially early in those relationships. So it does good things for us. The best advice I have ever heard for small talk came from a guest on my podcast. Her name's Rachel Greenwald. She's an interesting person. She's an academic and a matchmaker, really fascinating. And her advice was this: Be interested, not interesting. Many of us go into small talk thinking we have to be super interesting. We have to spike the ball over the net every time. When in fact small talk is more like playing the game of Hacky Sack, where it's simply just set the other person up to be successful and get the ball back to you. So if we go in with that mindset, it makes it easier. Now there's some rules that we can follow. One rule is the one that you shared that in small talk there should be a balance of disclosure or depth of disclosure over time. So if you're telling me about the first time your first pet died, and I'm telling you my favorite color is blue, there's a discrepancy in disclosure there. Clearly you've revealed a lot more than I have. And we have this notion of reciprocity that if you share something that is appropriate but is more disclosive, that I should at some point match that level or come close. And if we don't, then it feels very awkward and we feel like we're not jiving in that way. I don't want everybody sitting with a little card that they're checking off, but having that general notion in mind can help. And the trick here is not to be too disclosive too quickly. So if we start small talk and we're talking about the I meeting that we're at, and you immediately jump into the fight you had with your significant other that might lead to divorce, that's a deep and big step that might feel a little inappropriate. But over time, if we continue to disclose, it might be perfectly natural for you to share that. So there's sort of expectations and we just have to be mindful of those. Another thing we need to be mindful of that I think is really important is this distinction between shifting and supporting responses. In a conversation, I can be supportive. That is, you might say, "Hey Matt, I just got back from Costa Rica." I could say, "Oh great, did you spend time in San Jose? Did you get to any of the beaches?" Those are supporting responses. I'm asking you to keep telling me more. A shifting response would be like, "Oh, you went to Costa Rica. I went to Hawaii." San Jose? Did you get to any of the beaches?" Those are supporting responses. I'm asking you to keep telling me more. A shifting response would be like, "Oh, you went to Costa Rica. I went to Hawaii." And the goal in a good conversation is to have more supporting responses than shifting, but to have some shifting responses. Because if all I do is continually support you, it looks like I don't want to share. I'm not being disclosive at all. So there are these subtle things that we can be aware of to help the conversation go and to breed that intimacy and immediacy that we feel, but it takes a congruence, a balancing of doing that.…

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