Networking and Small Talk

I am a closeted introvert. I love to create situations where people have a wonderful time or teach people a new skill, and then go hide in the back.

I really, desperately, wholly, completely hate networking situations. You know what I’m talking about: those big lead-generating moments where everyone needs your one-liner and wants to know how you can help them, only to be talked over when they decide you aren’t the lead they are looking for. Those big parties or social situations where you’re meant to find more business, get a new job, or connect with new people. You’re attempting to expand your network, but your brain becomes fried with small-talk situations that feel a little bit like torture.

Did I mention I’m a closeted introvert? Many people don’t believe me when I tell them that—that I hate big social situations and would rather just quietly sit at home or talk to one or two other people.

It might be because networking often feels fake, transactional, and focused on results. As a self-described process over product person, I think that being around people so focused on products makes me mental. It might be that networking feels cold and calculated. It might be because it feels cliquish; some people network only with people they like, and people who know people they know, which changes the dynamic quite a bit.

While I agree with the cold sentiment, I don’t always think you have to network with people you like. Sure! Networking with folks you like makes it easier. It also creates this incestuous bubble of connection. Know the same 10 people you see talking to one another at every networking event in your field? They are their own network. You have to meet new people to actually take advantage of networking.

Taking a class—like one in improv—is a great way to network because when you are in class together you are creating a bond over a shared hobby. However, if you want to meet people outside of those who share your interests, you will have to prepare for those impromptu situations. Before we move into any new tips, let’s take a minute to refresh what we learned in the previous two chapters, because you’ll need to use them in a networking situation:

•   Pay attention to your audience. What kind of situation are you going into? What do they want? What do you want? Do a brief identification of who they are.

•   What version of you needs to show up? When I’m doing work for EE and networking on behalf of EE, I need to show up as a certain version of me depending on the audience. College students and professors? I need to be a bit fun and funky. Learning and development crowd in the South? I’m pulling out a pair of heels and covering my shoulders—no F-bombs to be seen. New York City? Usually donned in my professional end of attire and very little filter in my workshops—straight to the point with no fluff.

•   Listening is crucial. You have a very short time (usually) to get to know people in a networking situation. Pay attention. Stop thinking about your email or what you’re doing next. Be present.

Now that we’ve recapped those skills, let’s move on. A necessary evil to professional and personal development, networking can make or break your next career move. Studies estimate 70 to 80 percent of jobs are not published online, which makes networking even more crucial.¹

A DIFFERENT KIND OF WHAT YOU WANT

Once you’ve thought about your audience and what version of you is coming out for this audience (and if you haven’t, do it now), dive deeper into what they want. What kind of people might be at this event? What are their objectives? Are they there for the food or for the people? Are they going because they have to or because they want to? “Have to” versus “want to” changes how people feel about a situation. If someone has to be there, they don’t want to be immediately hit by your résumé. If they want to be there, is it because of the potential of meeting someone, or because of the food, location, drinks? These would all require a different approach and direction in conversation. A quick overarching note for all networking and small talk: you don’t want to treat this as simply transactional. You also don’t want this to be completely wide open and spontaneous, especially if this is the first time you’ve thought about a networking event in advance and didn’t just go on a whim.

Who could be there and why are you going? This is a little like how you feel in a conversation, and if you don’t care, why bother? If you don’t care who is going to be there and you’re going because you have to, that energy is going to come right back to you, and apathy isn’t pretty. Once you figure out who might be in the room and why you’re going, think about those wants and what you want out of an ideal situation. What would be the best-case scenario with the best results?

One of my favorite things to work on with people is networking, which is hilarious because I hate it so much. To be clear, while I personally don’t like it, I do find it fascinating and I enjoy helping people feel comfortable doing it. Recently, I was working with a man who was trying to get a new job in tech. He was in a bit of a toxic workplace, and every time he went out networking, he desperately hoped to get a new job out of it. You know where this is going.

Clearly, his desperation was showing. He never walked into a situation with the best case in mind; he just kept thinking, “If I don’t get a job here, I’m going to be stuck there for this much longer.” That’s not a pretty thing to come across in networking, and it definitely doesn’t help the situation when all you’re looking for is the next opportunity. Yes, he understood his want, but that’s all he focused on. He didn’t think about who might be there and how he felt about the overall event, which led to an agenda-oriented mind-set.

We worked on some other wants. He wanted a new job, and he also wanted to be introduced to more people because it widened the chances of the job he wanted with a company that wouldn’t necessarily be at any of his networking opportunities. He ultimately wanted any kind of in to connect with his dream company. Aside from his workload, he was also exhausted dealing with the toxic people on his team, and he simply wanted to meet more people who weren’t toxic. After digging into these other wants, we thought about the best-case scenario. Turns out, it wasn’t him getting a “You are hired!” on the spot, it was an introduction to someone at this dream company because he felt that he could get the job if he got the chance. So his goal wasn’t to talk about getting a new job, it was to meet as many people as possible.

Usually, I would say this isn’t the best networking goal. I don’t think it does a service to people to throw business cards at each other or go around collecting as many as possible. We tempered this goal: in a two-hour networking situation, he would try to have at least five conversations—more than, “Oh the food is good,” or “What do you do?” with five different people he hadn’t met yet. He couldn’t go up to people he had previously met, and he couldn’t just approach a group of people he recognized from another event. He had to find new people to connect to the people he was looking for.

At his next networking event, he connected with five people. Same thing at the one after that, and the one after that. It was helpful for him to have a finite number because he, too, wasn’t the biggest fan of networking, so once he was done with the five, he gave himself permission to leave. After a few weeks of meeting his five people per event, he finally met someone who had worked for the company he was looking for. He followed up with the connection, continued the conversation, and got a new job—and away from the toxic workplace.

This was an ideal situation. He saw his want, set up his action items, and accomplished what he wanted. As perfect as this outcome was, he set himself up for success by making his goal achievable. Will every goal happen like this with networking? No, because again, like so much of impromptu communication, you have no idea what the other person will say or do. You can plan your side, and only to a certain extent will it help. Connecting this back to improv, only so much in networking can be planned—the rest has to be figured out as you go. By planning and prepping for what you can and focusing on what can be affected by planning, you have freedom in the moment and you’re less uptight about doing it right.

ELEVATOR PITCH: AND GO!

Let’s get planning! After you’ve determined your want and what version of you needs to be out there, you should make sure you know how to introduce that version of you to other people.

This trips up many people. In improv, we start in the middle. You don’t start from the beginning. You go to the point where the stakes are the highest. In networking, you have to start at the beginning, and that’s often with your elevator pitch. The original idea behind an elevator pitch is pretty simple: you’re taking an elevator with another person and you have that amount of time to introduce yourself. It is not long. This isn’t a pre-war crank elevator. Elevator pitches are meant to start a conversation. They are intended to get another person interested in hearing more about the person who is doing the pitch. Think of it as a really great movie trailer. It makes you want to learn more. You don’t want to give off the impression that everything that needs to be said is already out there. This is why they need to be short, specific, interesting, and authentic. Many people will suggest solving problems and defining your brand promise with your elevator pitch. I think it might work for some people but not necessarily everyone. The only must-haves for all elevator pitches—brand or personal—are the four characteristics just mentioned.

Before you work on refining your pitch, you need to have a group to focus on. Pick a basic audience and a simple goal. This is the specific part: you’re tailoring it to one audience, not every audience. Maybe it’s a local group of professionals who you want to collaborate with. Keep your goals simple. Just like with wants in improv moments, they can definitely be something you’re striving toward and they shouldn’t be something so far-fetched that you will never be successful. Once you’ve got your goals, start to construct that elevator pitch. You need to cover who you are, what you do, and why they should care. Spend some time working those three things out, and get it to a place where you feel comfortable encompassing those three points together in one sentence.

You might have a very long sentence. A client I’m working with on networking had a full paragraph. It started with: “Hi, my name is Kate, and I work in financial analysis for a local hardware company, and I try to make sure things stay in a place where people both understand and can process . . . ,” and went on for a while. If you can’t stick to simple in the beginning, be ready to edit. She could have simply said, “Hi, my name is Kate and I work in finance with a local company.”

For some people, I suggest staying away from scripting elevator pitches word for word. Our writing voice is often very different from our speaking voice. Try talking it out. Pull out your cell phone and answer the questions in the previous Try This activity a few times. Record it, listen to it, then refine it to make it sound more like what you want it to say. Continue to do this until you end up with words and phrases that you feel comfortable working with for the next part of this activity.

Before you start this next part, time yourself. See how long it is. It’s important to note that you don’t want to memorize any of this. You want to know the main points, and it might sound similar from time to time. You don’t want to memorize the word order. Aside from forgetting the pitch, because you’re only concerned with the order, you’ll sound disconnected from those words. You’re losing a lot of the authenticity of conversation if you over-rehearse or memorize. If you’re stuck, just answer those three questions, and make sure you know those answers backward and forward, left and right. Take the answers to the questions and put them together in something that runs between 60 and 90 seconds.

Now say it out loud. It’s not going to sound perfect; as long as it works with the audience you’re thinking about and sounds like you, it’s a good start. Something I always remind myself and my clients—you can always edit something but you cannot edit blank pages. Once you have something down, edit, edit, edit. Record yourself speaking and pay close attention to places where you trip up, stumble, or become repetitive. These are all things you can cut out or trim. It’ll be uncomfortable to hear yourself speak, but this is the best way to practice your pitch and pick out what works and what doesn’t. Listen to your pitch from the perspective of your audience, and you’ll be able to finesse it in a way that will gear it toward them.

Practice your pitch on as many people as possible to see where the meat lies in your info. What are the essential parts that make you you? Those bits are the important ones, and when you know those, you can improvise your pitch depending on the person. That’s where the authentic part comes in. Since you want your pitch to sound conversational and like you, having a few different versions is a great strategy, because then you can pick and choose different elements from different versions. You’ll also never directly say why you care. It’s not natural to say, “I care about the work I do in communication because people need to do a better job connecting with one another to not sound like robots.” I might say instead, “I’m Jen and I run a communications consultancy that helps people connect through their verbal communication.”

See the difference? Now refine yours: think about what needs to be there, how you’re showing you care, and why they should also care.

My secret hack to being so flexible in these conversational situations that are often super awkward? Overprepare. Yes, you heard me right—plan for all the extremes—know the extra-long version of your pitch and the fast version. By understanding both ends, you can be flexible in the center. If your creative box is small, you can’t be flexible in the same way you can be if you have a big box of options. If you have a lot to play with, you can pivot whenever you need to.

Once you’ve got a basic outline down, you can work on expanding it for different audiences and situations. You’re going to be using the same core information, and it will still be in your style. You’re just changing or adjusting the important information.

One client was looking to add more speaking engagements for the year. She ran a gym and wanted to be seen as an authority on self-care for female entrepreneurs. We worked on her pitch, and the biggest issue she kept running into was trying to get out all of the information that she thought was important. We ended up taking a five-minute intro and bringing it down to about two minutes. Every time we tried to get shorter, she ended up speaking faster and faster.

Pro tip: don’t exhaust your audience if you want them to do something for you. Or work with you. Or ever listen to you again.

Her biggest problem wasn’t that she was rambling about nothing. She felt everything she was saying was crucial to tell people she was meeting. There were so many points and accomplishments that she felt needed to be brought up, and no matter what I said, it was always the same, “What if they just needed one more bit of information?”

This is usually not the case. That one more bit of information is usually on the far end of too much. You want your pitch to be evocative, and that’s what makes it interesting. The people you’re networking with should always want to learn more. They shouldn’t feel like they know everything about you already. Stay focused: if you want to be the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, great. Is that the next step? Probably not. Take steps to what you want, remember? If you’re simply going through all the steps at once, you get overwhelmed. If you focus on what’s next, things become doable, actionable steps. You don’t go from entry level to CEO. Don’t worry about what comes after the first “next”; just focus on what is directly next. The people you’re meeting right now might not be the same people who will help you or who you need to connect with down the road. Focus on that immediate audience, and think: How much of this do they need to know and what do you want them to ask about? If they didn’t ask, would you be upset? Would it matter?

With my self-care for girl bosses client, we trimmed the pitch to about 90 seconds—this is a pretty long time for one person to be talking to another with no breaks. It feels even longer if you’re talking at them. Since she was pretty high energy and loved to ask questions, the compromise was this longer pitch allowed her to feel comfortable getting her information out, knowing she’d take the backseat for much of the rest of the conversation and let the other person drive.

People often ask, how long is long enough? Personally, I think pitches that are one sentence are the strongest. You’re often remembered more for the conversation than that one line, so spending time being a great listener and having a back and forth is so much more effective than a rambling elevator pitch. Keep it simple and short.

Once you’ve got your pitch to a place where you’re ready to work it out with an audience, get yourself to a networking situation and go for it. Ready, right?

I wouldn’t throw you to the wolves like that—I’m a planner, remember?

AFTER THE PITCH, LET THEM DRIVE

When you are ready to start getting that pitch out there, you need to simply get out there. If you’re overthinking things too much, this isn’t going to progress. Remember the idea of “going against the grain”? If you’re plateauing, you need something to shake things up so you can continue to grow. When you’re looking around a networking situation with a new pitch, aim for the low-hanging fruit. Go to people who look approachable. Maybe they are turned out with shoulders and feet facing the larger audience, or standing by themselves, looking around for people to meet: get the positive reinforcement to go in and introduce yourself. Shake hands (and not like a dead fish), look them right in the eyes, and go for it . . . and let them talk first.

Trust me on this. Taking the initiative to go up to someone and say, “Hi, I’m Jen,” and asking them what they do does a few things:

•   You get to find out why they might be interested in you. By hearing what they do, you can quickly edit your intro to be relevant to what they do.

•   You get a moment to quell your racing heart from walking up to someone you don’t know. The first few times you do this will feel incredibly awkward. You’re going to overthink, it’s going to be nerve-racking, you might actually shock another person by going up to them and straight up introducing yourself.

•   You look confident. How many people come up to you at networking situations? Not many, I’m willing to bet. A nice way to stand out, mostly because of the next point . . . .

•   People love to talk about themselves. A 2013 study from the Harvard University Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Lab showed that when participants talked about themselves, their opinions, and personality traits, brain areas associated with reward, pleasurable feelings, and motivation showed high levels of activation. Essentially, the same areas that activate with sex, cocaine, and good food lit up when people talked about themselves.² If you make a person feel good during that small-talk conversation they had with you, they will associate you with those great feelings.

This isn’t to say you should just let someone talk and wait for your turn to talk. As I mentioned, you should be listening to what they do and what they are talking about, to adjust your intro to them specifically. A great example of this is a woman we were working with in our Small Talk and Networking class. We actually started this class in 2017 because so many people expressed a lot of anxiety in meeting people. Tara was no exception. She felt as though she had the same feeling after every single interaction at a networking event: “I wish I would have told them that I [insert fact about herself].”

She had a great elevator pitch about her love of customer service, experience in sales, and her next set of goals. Here it is: “Hi, I’m Tara! I’m working to connect companies with customers who know their worth.”³ Really nice for her: specific, straight and to the point, evocative to ask more questions . . . the problem happened when she was talking to someone else who was a bit more nuanced, so she couldn’t pivot after she made that very specific and concise statement. Once she said who she was, she got so caught up with that definition she couldn’t see outside of that box. Think about your elevator pitch like your umbrella: this simple statement is the connector of all of your parts. Tara saw her elevator pitch as her defining factor, rather than the start of a longer conversation.

Tara struggled with the pivot. She started conversations in a confident and comfortable manner. The moment the person she was talking to said something she would need to add on to, she couldn’t find the confidence to add that information, because she panicked that it went against her elevator pitch statement. We simply flipped the script. She started to go up to people and introduce herself, and then immediately ask what they did. During that time, she worked on listening to them (don’t skip that step) and reworking her intro to fit what she wanted this specific person to know about her.

This is difficult. Plenty of studies show our brains can’t multitask and the truth is, you’re not completely present and attentive while you’re doing this. You are thinking about something else while you’re listening. It’s a balancing act between really processing what the person in front of you is saying and thinking about your next move and waiting for your turn to talk or thinking of a question that inserts your opinion and agenda. This sounds like a lot, because it is. Start by listening more than thinking about your next move. The more you practice this, the easier it will get. Again, the more prework you do, the more flexible you can be.

PROCEED WITH CAUTION

A few warnings before we move along to the actual small-talk part of networking.

1. Do not make things up.

I repeat, do not make things up. Lying in your elevator pitch is a terrible idea.

If you don’t know something or realize you have nothing in common with this person, have a pleasant conversation and move along to another person. Don’t pretend to understand something; don’t nod and say, “yes, of course,” if you have no idea whatsoever. Don’t get trapped in a lie, because there are only two ways out of a lie: admit you lied or lie more. Both are terrible options. It’s better to tell the truth, admit you don’t know something, ask a question. There is nothing wrong with saying, “I don’t know that,” or “Tell me more about this,” or “I’m not familiar with that.” Admitting you don’t know something is confident.

Students fight me a little on this one—isn’t improv one big lie? No. It’s a reality that’s created for that moment. Sure, you can create whatever reality you want to in the moment in real life. In real life, you have to deal with that one moment in the next moment. In improv, that created reality ends in about three to four minutes, and you never have to deal with it again. You reflect on it and move on. If you lie or even fib a bit in your elevator pitch, you’re going to end up having to lie or fib more just to get out of it.

There is a big, big, big exception here: you can spin to positive. If you stick to the facts, you don’t need to spin, but if you find yourself using a statement you feel fraudulent with, either stop using it or lead with the positive aspect of it, not the negative. There will be a lot more on the pivot and spin in the chapter on interviewing.

2. Don’t make split judgments on worth during that opening time.

If they are talking and you are thinking, “Wow, I have nothing in common with this person,” or “This person has nothing to do with my goals,” please, for the love of all things, have a conversation and then excuse yourself.

The moment you start thinking of disappointment or that you are wasting your time talking to this person, you’re going to give that energy out, and that’s the impression they will get of you. You never know who they know, who they might be connected with, and how your life might move along to need this person in the future. Everything doesn’t need to be an opportunistic moment with an immediate selfish result; sometimes you can simply have great conversations with people you don’t need anything from. I hear from clients and see situations at networking events where people shut off when they are done talking to someone—and you can see that glazed-over look. Stop doing that, or stay home. Your want in the conversation is to have a nice conversation. Full stop.

3. Don’t be so agenda-oriented that you don’t let a person finish their thoughts.

Imagine this scenario: you’re in front of the person who you’ve been waiting to meet. It’s them. It’s the person you know you can impress if you could just get in front of them, and now you are and you just keep talking—for an excessive amount of time.

This is just as bad as the glazed-over look, if not worse. If you are in front of that amazing person who simply needs to hear you talk and they will be impressed, simply talk. Do your perfect elevator pitch and have a conversation. Do not suddenly forget the practiced pitch and tell them everything about yourself, or decide you’re going to interrupt them while they are talking to tell them the awesome thing you’ve been waiting to tell them. Use a variation of the Last Word activity we looked at earlier if you have to. Use the last word of their previous sentence to inspire the first word of your sentence. Do not repeat the last word of their sentence as your first word, unless it makes sense or you’ll end up sounding like Tarzan. Let yourself be thoughtful, instead of rude.

Diving further into agenda-orientated thinking, don’t ask questions to another person simply because you want to talk about your answer. That’s agenda-oriented thinking at its worst. This happens often during improv workshops, and most recently, in a class for an insurance company. One of the agents got up to do a longer improv moment with another agent. He started the conversation with an evocative statement about robbing a bank. Expecting the person to go along with him, he phrased his statement and gift in a way that allowed for choice: “Are you all set for today’s job? I think we can walk away with a big payout—I’ve already got the place staked out.”

Now, in the world of “Yes, and,” beginners would think, “Oh, I have to do this!” and would respond accordingly with a “Yes, I’m ready to rob the bank!” or something with a similar meaning. In this particular workshop, we dug into the nuances of “Yes, and”—and his partner accepted the reality of the situation. She acknowledged they had a history of robbing places, but she decided this would be the moment that she gave up her life of crime. Instead of following her on what might have been an interesting journey, he kept bringing up all of these instances where she apparently just said she was ready to rob today, and she batted all of them down.

We wrapped up the moment and started reflecting. Neither was terribly pleased with how the moment went, and he complained that she didn’t follow his idea. She replied back that she didn’t want to go along with the bank robbery premise, so she made herself a recovering bank robber. It was a “Yes, and”: she didn’t negate; she made the moment about making a different choice in the same reality. The problem came when he kept pushing the decision he made in the beginning, and she didn’t recognize that he wasn’t giving in, so she didn’t change her goals. He wanted the moment to be about robbing a bank—she wanted it to be about getting out of a life of crime.

The conversation didn’t end up going anywhere, because they both kept fighting for what they wanted, and neither would give in. Maybe if he let her out of the life of crime after one more job, or she offered to do this last job and then they were done. Neither offered that up as a solution, so it kept bouncing back and forth in the inactivity.

I bring up this moment because you can have something similar happen at a networking event when you’re talking to someone so agenda-oriented that you have no idea how to proceed without offering them what they want. I spend a lot of time at local small-business meet-ups, and I’m thinking of one person in particular. No matter what you say, he ties in his business and how his business helps small businesses to every single conversation. Talk about food? His business helps food-based businesses. Talk about women-centric spaces? His business could be an ally to women-run spaces. You know this kind of person. If you are this kind of person, let’s work on this.

Both people in that earlier moment were pushing their agenda. There’s a possibility they are both like this in real life, to some extent. Part of improv is being able to make a strong choice that builds on another strong choice, and part of it is being a follower. That’s one of the reasons why it’s so great for communication: you need to learn when to drive and when to be a passenger.

If you realize that the other person is pushing their agenda, you can do a few things. You can go along for the ride. This is always a choice—and while it might be a little frustrating, sometimes these people simply need to drive the conversation. Let them: react, respond, have a great conversation, and then next time you see them at a networking event, find someone else to talk to.

Or you can try to drive the conversation: keep in mind this might very well be an incredibly frustrating effort. You can’t change the way that other people communicate—you can only change the way you respond to it. You might hit the moment when they want to have a real conversation or they might be completely oblivious to what they do. You can’t change them.

If they are someone close to you, you can always bring it up to them. A simple, “Hey, every time we talk, it feels like you’re always talking about [insert thing here].” This might not be well received. Transparency is confidence; it’s also intimidating.

If it’s you: make a point to learn something about everyone you talk to. Don’t always teach them about you. Ask them questions about what they do, why they do it—open-ended questions that have more than a yes or no answer. Brainstorming a few before attending events is a great idea. Stick with it. If you’ve been doing most of the talking in networking conversations, it’s a good idea to pull back and do some listening. People won’t think less of you if you’re doing more listening than talking—remember people love to talk about themselves. You have that in your favor, as long as you are focusing on asking questions and listening to the response. If you ask a question, you need to attend to that response.

4. Don’t self-deprecate.

People often use self-deprecation as a tactic to jokingly fib about their insecurities. Self-deprecation is not attractive when you’re meeting people—and I’m willing to argue it is never attractive. That’s another discussion I have often with students: but many funny people are self-deprecating. Are they though? Think of the people who use it as a strategy to make people laugh: Are you laughing because it’s funny, or are you laughing because it’s a little awkward? And while awkward is funny, I doubt anyone wants to be associated with awkward. If you’re seeing someone you’ve met before, keep your hello and handshake. Remind the person where you met—not in a self-deprecating way. None of this “You probably don’t remember me, but . . .” nonsense—stick to the facts. A simple “We met last month at this event . . .” will suffice before reminding them of your name. If you don’t remember their name, that’s OK. Ask them.

Since these warnings start to tap into small talk, now is a great time to dig into the part everyone loves.

THE MEAT: SMALL TALK

We dislike small talk because of its very definition and our experiences with it. Small talk is a nice conversation about trivial things. When I think small talk, I think about the weather immediately—and often find myself talking about it. The first thing to do: check in to see how you feel about small talk. Do you love it, hate it, feel indifferent toward it? Are you good at it? Find your starting point, and let’s improve it.

There are a few routes you can go with small talk. For initial interactions, using improv at its basic core is usually the best bet. Let the other person talk first, then listen and respond with the active listening points from earlier, and let that be the conversation. If it gets deeper than that, great. If it stays on the surface, connecting with what that person does and the questions you have about it, and then moves on to what you do and the questions they might have about it, great. Let the conversation flow naturally and see where you end up. Don’t try to force it. Especially if you’re meeting for the first time, you can let the newness of the situation allow for questions.

So when it’s past the introduction and into the meat of the conversation, how do you get away from the “That weather!” that so many of us default to? Core principles of improv are still at play here. You need to listen and respond. Use active listening. That much is easy and should almost always be able to keep a conversation going, once it’s started. Getting the conversation started might be a bit more difficult, so thinking about ways “in” to the conversation is a crucial homework assignment to complete prior to the conversation.

Think of a few topics that might be useful in the situation. You can also implement some of our active listening strategies there. Talking about the setting is always a great in (as well as digging into information the two of you talked about last time, if you’ve met before). Tapping into the psychology mentioned earlier, you can always ask the person about themselves. Asking questions like, “Are you planning any trips this year?” is a pretty safe option. It doesn’t make others feel bad if they aren’t, because then you can have a laugh about how busy you are, how much travel costs, how it’s hard to decide on one place. It opens up a conversation that people are excited about if they are—where are you going, why there, what are you most looking forward to.

You can also discuss current events, but be careful. Not because you’re going to offend the person you’re talking to or get into a weird conversation when it comes to NPR-type conversations (although, given the current political state of the nation, you might). It’s more about that you can’t unring a bell. If you introduce a topic, it’s difficult for you to unintroduce it, especially if the person you’re talking to wants to talk about it. Think back to listening for gifts in improv moments: you can’t take back a gift that’s been given. If you say it, it’s all fair game and continues to be until the moment or the conversation is over. As a general rule of thumb, don’t bring up things or ask questions you aren’t comfortable with answering yourself. If you’re going to ask a question, be fully prepared someone might ask you the exact same thing. You don’t have to prep your answer as if you’ve been waiting for them to ask that question your entire life. If you bring something up, chances are you’re going to also have to discuss it unless the people you’re talking to just like to hear themselves talk.

In general, maintaining a conversation is a two-way street. You can do as much work as possible and the other person might be checked out or agenda-oriented. One of the things people bring up in our classes as another concern: what to do with topics you don’t want to address. What if the person you’re talking to starts to talk about uncomfortable topics that might lead to arguments or simply things you don’t want to talk about? Remember, you can’t unring the bell, so you just have to deal with it.

Improv moments in class tap into this discomfort. Occasionally, people use that space to have the conversations they wanted to have as well as conversations they are testing out. Conversations like the break-up talk, the wedding proposal, the “I want a raise,” and the “I quit” moments are only a few that I’ve seen in class and in workshops. The difference here: usually you have these conversations with people you know, so there is a bit of a relationship that you can not only build on but also connect to. When you are meeting someone for the first time, then you have to deal with that awkward moment of not knowing how someone might respond to you not wanting to talk about those sticky subjects.

Planning in this situation, like so many impromptu moments, is helpful. What are the topics you want to avoid? Any topic might be fair game for me; if I’m in a situation where I’m not quite sure how someone might respond and it matters what they think of me, I will probably avoid “hot topics” like politics. Also, it’s not just avoiding this topic, it’s also asking the question of, “Do I need to know what this person thinks about this sensitive topic? Does it matter?” Only you can answer that one.

Awkward Silence

What happens when nothing works, and you hit the perceived death knoll of communication: silence?

Repeat after me: “Silences are OK. Silences are good things.” Silences in conversations are perfectly normal and could be happening for a number of reasons. There is nothing wrong with a small lull in the conversation. Things get weird when we try to fill silences with chatter or awkward comments about the silence. Silences can be thoughtful; they are also necessary for us to think about what we want to say next or what was just said. Silences are also powerful: remember Obama’s manner of taking silences?

If the silence gets too long and you see that everyone is uncomfortable, feel free to bring up one of those items that you’ve brainstormed as openers. This is where that list comes in handy.

THE EXIT STRATEGY

After you’ve thought about the topics you’d rather not discuss and those you are comfortable discussing, you now have to think about your exit strategy. You should have an exit strategy no matter what, even if you’re in a “fine” conversation and you’d rather not be in the same conversation all night. Using the word need in your exit, “I need to get food,” or “I need to go to the bathroom,” is usually a surefire way to get out of the conversation. Shake hands with the person you’re leaving, tell them it was a pleasure to talk to them (or whatever words express that you had a nice conversation), and then state your reason for exiting. You can exchange a business card at this time, and then go do what you were planning on doing. Simple, clear and direct. It’s a lot easier having a reason to leave rather than waiting for a conversation that might never end. Another great strategy is bringing up those gifts they dropped in your time as the listener! You can comment how nice it was talking to them about [insert gift here] and you’d love to hear more, and set up coffee or a call for next week. Simple, straightforward, and clear—and the added bonus of showing that you’re listening!

This exit strategy can be used when someone brings up a topic you’d rather not discuss as well. If you’re in a conversation, you can always exit that conversation. Another way to deal with a topic you don’t want to talk about is changing that topic. Again, transparency is often a good strategy here, but if you’d rather not state that the person you’re talking to is bringing up a topic that you’d rather not discuss, you can comment on one of the topics you’ve brought up prior, ask a question about something that’s either happening in the room or that person’s job or family/life. Students often ask about the smoothness of this conversation switch, and I have to say, this isn’t usually a smooth moment. You clearly are getting upset or nervous because a topic came up that you’d rather not talk about. The person you’re talking to either has no issue with that topic or they like to cause waves in conversation. Chances are they have no issue with the topic, so that issue is your issue. You’re going to feel a little stressed at that moment, so simply change the subject if the conversation is worth it, and move along. You’ll probably also notice this discomfort more than the other person. We often think things are much worse than they actually are. Take a breath and give yourself some grace.

There is a time and a place when you need to cut your losses in a conversation and move on to another person—even if this person was “the one” who you wanted to talk to. What happens when they won’t let you go? This is something I feel folks deal with all the time—you have a conversation, you realize you need your exit strategy, you execute that strategy, and boom! There they are again, outside the bathroom, at the food table, or in your next conversation. To be clear, this isn’t the creepy and possibly-bad-for-your-well-being kind of person who won’t let you go. If a person is following you and you feel unsafe, please immediately find someone that you do feel safe with and tell them, or get out of the situation.

In all of the other situations where a person just won’t stop talking to you—there are ways out of that moment that don’t involve excessive awkwardness. Once again, you need to find your exit line, practice it so it’s confident, and use it. An easy one that just about anyone can use: “This has been such a great conversation, I really want to keep talking, and I know I need to chat with a few other people tonight—can I get your card to make an appointment to talk more?” You’ve got the need statement that gives you something to do, you have an action item for them in giving a card, and you can now (or not) set time to follow up with them.

In networking workshops, I really like to do an activity called Trigger Word. Essentially, each person is assigned a normal, everyday word that might come up in conversation. It won’t be something like and or it or or—those are too commonly used and often missed even when you’re actively listening. Think more of words like orange or often or common. These words aren’t out of the ordinary but won’t be in every sentence. Maybe there are three people in the moment, and Person A gets the word orange, Person B gets the word often, and Person C gets the word common. They start an improv moment, having a conversation and paying attention to that who, where, what, how—always, always pay attention to the driving factors—and whenever one of those trigger words get said, the person who has that word has to immediately leave or immediately return. For example:

Person A: Wow, it’s an absolutely beautiful day for our anniversary picnic!

Person B: I’m so glad we get to have it in the same park where we met.

Person A: I know! Remember last year? All of that rain! Not common for this time of year.

Person C: (enters) I can’t believe you are here with her. You’re cheating! I knew that orange sweater wasn’t mine!

Person A: Oh . . . I have to run . . . I forgot the basket. (leaves)

The trick to this activity is not only to pay attention, but it’s also to find a quick way in and out. You could always just leave; the higher-level skills happen when you’re focused on making your entrances and exits consistent with what’s happening in the conversation. While this is a far departure from real life—you’re definitely entering and exiting way more often than you would in an actual conversation, and on a specific word, which isn’t a normal thing you’re working on—those quick moments and solid exit and entrances can be adapted to real life.

The application in this involves a little bit of split thinking—think about a conversation you just had that you wished you could have gotten out of faster. Was there something they kept saying that made you want to leave? What was it? Now, in hindsight, how could you have left? This isn’t about a woulda, coulda, shoulda situation—this is about learning from past moments that might repeat themselves.

This ties into another reason that improv is key practice for communication skills—situations often repeat themselves, and they are almost always mash-ups of past situations. Reflect on this past week or last week, and break down moments to their core parts: What did people want? Who were you talking to? There will probably be a lot of overlap when you start looking at these situations as a whole.

FINDING YOUR GROUP

This might feel a little backward—why did we think and work on everything first? Don’t you need a group to approach to practice these skills?

Taking the initiative to approach a group or a person is the hardest part of all of this. Reading the room and conversation is a skill that gets easier with time. Start paying attention to how a room feels. This might sound more intuition than quantitative based, and some of it is—much of it is further developing that empathy. Remember all the work thinking about emotions and recognizing how people show emotion? This is an applicable place. When you walk into a new space with people you don’t know (or even one you do!), take a breath and spend some time looking around. You don’t have to stare at people, just look at their body language and pay attention to the sounds in the room. Are people laughing? Is there a lot of chatter? Is it silent? Does it feel like everyone got there and no one is talking? These are all ways you can start to read the room.

With individual conversation, you do much of the same. What does their body language look like? Are they all hovering around the food? Are people crossed arms and legs, not because it’s cold but because they are uncomfortable? Are they standing and whispering in a tight circle or intimately talking in a corner, or are they in the middle of the room in a loose cluster? When you’re approaching a conversation that is already in progress, aim for the loose clusters and not the intimate conversations. They often will be easier to walk into and more open to another person than the tight conversations will be. They might be talking about something more private, which are conversations you don’t necessarily want to walk into cold with your cheery introduction.

This is a great time to think about your own body language during a conversation. Are you welcoming other people into the conversation? Are you trying to keep it more private? How is your distance to another person? What status are you showing? Tap into the elements of pose—what body part are you leading with?

Distance is a huge factor in conversation, as is the space you take up. Tackling distance first—if you’re hosting a conversation, you want to be sure you’re setting the tone for other people to join in. You aren’t standing too close to the person or people you’re talking to, you aren’t closed off, you’re not giving off tension or whispering to the person you’re talking to—you’re also not constantly scanning around for someone better to join the conversation.

There’s a hilarious improv activity related to personal space I’ve done with groups that are open to something like a person possibly invading their personal space. You’re doing an improv moment, and you start off with your usual checkboxes and then you either move closer to the person you’re talking to or move farther away. You could even move across the room. It’s an interesting one to try at home with someone you know to see what happens with the conversation and the feeling between the two of you. Usually, when it’s farther away, you feel a bit more impersonal with the person—this can even happen when you’re in “normal” talking distance. Many of us also tend to backpedal when we talk or move around because of the nervous energy we hold in our hips, so the farther away you are, the more impersonal you will be in that conversation. There’s also a possibility you’ll end up getting farther away from another person because of nervous energy about the subject. Don’t try this at work. It’s too weird to get so close to your coworker.

On the other side of this, if you’re standing very close in a closed-off group, you’re giving the impression that no one else is welcome in that group. This might completely fit your intentions—make sure it does if that’s what you’re doing. If you want that private conversation with another person, fantastic—stand close (not too close so you invade their space and comfort), speak softly, and have the conversation you want to have. If you would rather leave the conversation a bit more open for others to join, be sure your body language is reflecting this. If you’ve gotten closer or farther away from someone, pay attention to how they are reacting to this change. Did they mirror you? Did they move away? Respond to their nonverbal cues as you would to their words. If they move away, stop getting closer just like you’d get softer if they asked you to stop talking so loud.

When it comes to taking up space in a conversation, bigger is usually better, and that’s not always easy for women. Amy Cuddy, professor and researcher at Harvard Business School, states that space equals power. Men generally take up more space than women because they are physically bigger. Women often make themselves smaller because of a number of reasons, ranging from weight and size all the way to worries of arrogance. According to Cuddy, women still “feel looking strong is risky.” While Cuddy doesn’t advocate for men to take up less space, she does believe through building relationships and establishing trust, confidence can be built for women to exhibit comparable strength and power.

Cuddy also talks about faking it till you become it when it comes to body language. We touched on this with Viewpoints, and faking the smile until you felt the good vibes that come with smiling. Her Power Pose—a powerful stance like Wonder Woman or Superman⁴—can possibly change the chemistry in your brain, making you feel more confident. If like energy attracts like energy, clearly you want to be surrounded by confident people, right?

Think about how you do something like power posing in a conversation, especially in networking. While I encourage bathroom pep talks and getting rid of tensions, you can work on taking up more space in the moment if you know what that looks like in practice. Have a conversation today with someone with your feet close together, maybe even crossed in front of you. Keep your shoulders tight, and your stomach and butt clenched. Maybe even cross your arms and see what that person says or how they behave. They might ask you what’s wrong or how you’re feeling because you’re giving out all of that nervous energy.

Now try the opposite, even if it’s in the same conversation. Stand open, feet under your knees, under your hips, under your shoulders. Release tension. When you’re making gestures, don’t lock your arms at your side. Take note of how you feel here versus how you felt with the closed stance.

That open stance will also welcome others into your conversation or allow others to feel comfortable walking up to you in a networking situation. By practicing an open versus closed stance, you’re getting comfortable with what both of those feel like. You’ll probably end up somewhere in between both of them, but to know when you are open or closed, you’ll have to know what your thresholds for both are.