8 ms·

Any good book recommendations on engaging small talk and authentic first impressions? I’m headed to a weeklong NYE retreat that has a tendency to dredge up high

Any good book recommendations on engaging small talk and authentic first impressions? I’m headed to a weeklong NYE retreat that has a tendency to dredge up high school cafeteria level social anxieties.

wonder_er 9y ago
A while back I read Never Eat Alone [0], and found it to be fruitful for framing casual social interactions. Additionally, most other people do not look forward to "mindless smalltalk with strangers". Since it's possible that everyone in the group shares equal anxiety about being there, you can provide a gift to them by asking pointed questions. If it's easy for them to answer, and gives something interesting for everyone else to listen to, it's actually a lot of pressure off the whole group. The go-to question I use is: what's the best book you've read in the last year or so? Why? Note: This works for me because I am a voracious reader, and am always on the hunt for more good books, so if they can make a good book recommendation, I benefit. YMMV. Since not everyone reads, that question can be amended to "best movie/tv show/documentary". I'm often the new guy in certain work situations, and that question has saved me a lot of discomfort. good luck! [0] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00H6JBFOS/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00H6JBFOS/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...
- trentmb 9y ago
  Totally off topic- why is it people always use "voracious" to describe their reading habits?
  - forkLding 9y ago
    Hungry for information and hungry for more books
  - ellius 9y ago
    This is actually an everyday way of expressing a scientifically observed fact. Studies of highly intelligent people suggest that they have a “rage to learn”: they greedily and even obsessively search out new information.
  - chickenfries 9y ago
    It's funny how some adjectives always seem to be followed by certain nouns, huh? I think about this whenever I heard about "bodies strewn on the street" on the news. Reading (and watching) seems to be compared to eating all the time: - I devoured that book - I binged that season Then there's that term, "consumption" which seemingly applies to every piece of media.
    - knight17 9y ago
      Similarly, I have observed 'abject' going with 'poverty', usually.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
    - dswalter 9y ago
      You're looking for the linguistic term 'collocation,' and these are good examples of idiomatic usage of English. Further, words located in proximity with each other is a big part of the distributional hypothesis: "you shall know a word by the company it keeps". This is in turn a key component of how language models like word2vec or GloVe can be effective.
      - jacobolus 9y ago
        https://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/hofstadter/analogy.html https://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/hofstadter/analogy....
    - philwelch 9y ago
      There is a "veritable cornucopia" of these phrases.
- dominotw 9y ago
  This has the danger of someone rambling for like 10 minutes about some book and everyone else is just waiting for him/her to finish. I hate people who tell "stories" in big groups , so rude. I prefer quick back and forth where everyone gets a chance to speak. Lots of people overestimate how interesting their story is to other people. I want to know how to tell people who monopolize group discussion to shut the fuck up so others can speak.
  - wonder_er 9y ago
    100% agree. There are members of my family that, if allowed to contribute a sentence, often go on to dominate the conversation for minutes, despite the very obvious boredom and displeasure of everyone else in the conversation. If you come up with an answer to how to tell a conversational monopolist to shut up... please, please share it. I usually just walk away, but that doesn't improve the situation for everyone else.
    - pcunite 9y ago
      One thing that helps me is knowing that these people are Quality Time (according to the Five Love Languages book). Don't confuse Quality Conversation with Time. The best way to stop them is to identify the time that has gone by. I don't have perfect method yet.
      - wonder_er 9y ago
        Hah! That's a good book. My wife and I have running jokes about imaginary love languages. She's pretty sure "chocolate" is a love language. I agree.
    - executesorder66 9y ago
      I just interrupt them, by asking someone else in the group their opinion on what was just said. Rude? Yes, but not as rude as taking over the conversation for longer than you should.
      - 9y ago
- Fnoord 9y ago
  I like your suggestion but I am not sold on you asking about what someone's favorite documentary is in work situations. You generally want to avoid discussing politics in work situations. How do you cope with that? Has it ever lead to awkward situations?
  - wonder_er 9y ago
    good question. I pretty actively try to avoid discussing politics, because... well, it's rarely fruitful. Talking/debating pretty much never convinces anyone of anything. If you want to change someone's mind on something, step 1 tends to be "deeply understand why they think a certain thing", and not only is this totally at odds with casual work conversation, it's not actually appropriate in the vast majority of work relationships. Anyway - gentle redirects out of political topics usually work for me. If they say something like "I just watched a documentary about {bad group} doing {bad thing}, and that's why Trump is an idiot", I'd try something like "oh, where did you see that? Was it on Netflix, or cable TV?" If they say Netflix, then "oh, cool. I just saw a video on how Netflix caches content and uses this thing called a 'chaos monkey' to preempt catastrophic outages. It's really clever... the way they use it is..." Just pick a non-political element out of the conversation, and drive into that. Usually works.
avinassh 9y ago
How about `How to Win Friends and Influence People` by Dale Carnegie? https://www.amazon.com/dp/0091906350 https://www.amazon.com/dp/0091906350
dominotw 9y ago
> weeklong NYE retreat I would like to go to random retreats , where do i find these? Regarding anxiety, I constantly remind myself that people have short memories and even shorter memories about other people. No matter what embarrassing thing that do you do/say will be forgotten very soon by everyone.
StavrosK 9y ago
Not a book, but I've found that asking people what they do and being genuinely interested in it (especially if it's a job you know nothing about) is a treasure trove of interesting information. For example, if you meet a plumber, you can get hours of conversation out of just talking about the various aspects of the jobs. Although I guess it helps that I like learning about other jobs, too, and I tend to ask people to explain things in detail. They usually like that.
- TrevorAustin 9y ago
  Paul Ford has a great riff on that: https://medium.com/message/how-to-be-polite-9bf1e69e888c https://medium.com/message/how-to-be-polite-9bf1e69e888c > Here’s a polite person’s trick, one that has never failed me. I will share it with you because I like and respect you, and it is clear to me that you’ll know how to apply it wisely: When you are at a party and are thrust into conversation with someone, see how long you can hold off before talking about what they do for a living. And when that painful lull arrives, be the master of it. I have come to revel in that agonizing first pause, because I know that I can push a conversation through. Just ask the other person what they do, and right after they tell you, say: “Wow. That sounds hard.” > Because nearly everyone in the world believes their job to be difficult. I once went to a party and met a very beautiful woman whose job was to help celebrities wear Harry Winston jewelry. I could tell that she was disappointed to be introduced to this rumpled giant in an off-brand shirt, but when I told her that her job sounded difficult to me she brightened and spoke for 30 straight minutes about sapphires and Jessica Simpson. She kept touching me as she talked. I forgave her for that. I didn’t reveal a single detail about myself, including my name. Eventually someone pulled me back into the party. The celebrity jewelry coordinator smiled and grabbed my hand and said, “I like you!” She seemed so relieved to have unburdened herself. I counted it as a great accomplishment. Maybe a hundred times since I’ve said, “wow, that sounds hard” to a stranger, always to great effect. I stay home with my kids and have no life left to me, so take this party trick, my gift to you.
  - kaybe 9y ago
    If you think this sounds stupid - try, it works surprisingly well!
betenoire 9y ago
This book worked well at helping me overtime social anxiety. It helped me see how others saw me. Upon reading it, and taking its advice, at least one long-time friend mentioned to my wife at how much happier and friendlier I seemed lately. The Charisma Myth by Olivia Cabane.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
nhhilltopper 9y ago
Not a book, but a great starter question is "So what's on your (movie/book/travel/restaurant/etc.) bucket list this year?"
ww520 9y ago
Regarding anxiety, treat the small talk as a game. Something you're having fun with. Realize that the anxiety is coming from your beliefs, not the situation, and you have the power to change. You are an interesting person with a lot to contribute. Everyone else is a bit anxious inside and needs someone to talk. He would be glad if you strike up a conversation with him and find him interesting. Realize that what's the worse that can happen? If they don't like you, so what? Just like in a game, re-spawn in another spot and have fun again. As for specific techniques, there are the NEWS - News, Event, Weather, and Sport - for non-personal conversational topics. Event is the function you guys are attending that you can have a common shared topic to talk about. Additional topics: Movies, Musics, Mobile, TV, and Games. There are the FORD - Family, Occupation, Recreation, Dreams - for more personal topics to talk about. As for conversation techniques, there're the SPADDE techniques. S is for small talk, as above. P for paraphrasing what the other person has said. Paraphrasing as a form a question to ask for confirmation and show that you're really listening. Paraphrasing as a form of exclamation to show empathy. A for asking questions. Ask questions to open up new topics. Ask follow up questions to lead the topic further. D for disclosure. Disclose something about yourself. Give them a chance to ask you questions. If they don't know how to follow up, go back to S and A. D for deprecation. Add a bit of self-deprecation to the conversation. E for experience. Ask their experience or talk about your experience.
- adrianratnapala 9y ago
  Thanks for the acronym. I have learned that GNU's not NEWS!
cpeterso 9y ago
Dale Carnegie's How To Win Friends And Influence People is the classic small talk book. TL;DR: people like to talk about themselves and listeners make good conversationalists.
asadjb 9y ago
I just finished listening to "The Like Switch" [1] and it covers a lot of ground on how to hit it off with people. It starts with non-verbal behaviors to look friendly to people when they first see you and then slowly transitions into how to make them like you more when talking to them. I'm on a holiday now and I'm trying to apply some of the things I've learned. I feel like I'm getting good results. A lot of the suggestions are similar to what I've read in other books; especially the "How to win friends and influence people", which signals to me that these things are core principles rather than tricks found out by individual authors. One thing I've learned from these books. All of these techniques need you to have a degree of self-confidence in-order to apply them. That's something I'm working on right now, but overall I think these books (and similar ones) have a lot of good info to offer for shy non-communicative people like me. [1]: https://www.audible.com/pd/Self-Development/The-Like-Switch-Audiobook/B00RKRDOM2/ https://www.audible.com/pd/Self-Development/The-Like-Switch-...
ShabbosGoy 9y ago
You just have to realize that small talk, especially among those who don’t know each other well, is stateless. There is no beginning and no end. It’s just talking for the sake of killing time, introducing yourself, etc...
spodek 9y ago
Yes. If it doesn't break any rules to mention mine: Leadership Step by Step -- https://www.amazon.com/Leadership-Step-Become-Person-Others/dp/0814437931 https://www.amazon.com/Leadership-Step-Become-Person-Others/... -- in particular Chapter 17, on how to make a meaningful connection. Note that one of its foundations is that developing social, emotional, expressive, performance-based skills takes practice and rehearsal to go from mechanical practicing, like playing scales, to effortless, genuine, authentic self-expression. The same as in learning to act, sing, play an instrument, play a sport, military, and so on. The book gives you exercises. It's not for everyone. Just reading it will help you appreciate the skills. Practice will lead to growth.

wonder_er 9y ago

A while back I read Never Eat Alone [0], and found it to be fruitful for framing casual social interactions. Additionally, most other people do not look forward to "mindless smalltalk with strangers". Since it's possible that everyone in the group shares equal anxiety about being there, you can provide a gift to them by asking pointed questions. If it's easy for them to answer, and gives something interesting for everyone else to listen to, it's actually a lot of pressure off the whole group. The go-to question I use is: what's the best book you've read in the last year or so? Why? Note: This works for me because I am a voracious reader, and am always on the hunt for more good books, so if they can make a good book recommendation, I benefit. YMMV. Since not everyone reads, that question can be amended to "best movie/tv show/documentary". I'm often the new guy in certain work situations, and that question has saved me a lot of discomfort. good luck! [0] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00H6JBFOS/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00H6JBFOS/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...

trentmb 9y ago
Totally off topic- why is it people always use "voracious" to describe their reading habits?
- forkLding 9y ago
  Hungry for information and hungry for more books
- ellius 9y ago
  This is actually an everyday way of expressing a scientifically observed fact. Studies of highly intelligent people suggest that they have a “rage to learn”: they greedily and even obsessively search out new information.
- chickenfries 9y ago
  It's funny how some adjectives always seem to be followed by certain nouns, huh? I think about this whenever I heard about "bodies strewn on the street" on the news. Reading (and watching) seems to be compared to eating all the time: - I devoured that book - I binged that season Then there's that term, "consumption" which seemingly applies to every piece of media.
  - knight17 9y ago
    Similarly, I have observed 'abject' going with 'poverty', usually.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - dswalter 9y ago
    You're looking for the linguistic term 'collocation,' and these are good examples of idiomatic usage of English. Further, words located in proximity with each other is a big part of the distributional hypothesis: "you shall know a word by the company it keeps". This is in turn a key component of how language models like word2vec or GloVe can be effective.
    - jacobolus 9y ago
      https://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/hofstadter/analogy.html https://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/hofstadter/analogy....
  - philwelch 9y ago
    There is a "veritable cornucopia" of these phrases.
dominotw 9y ago
This has the danger of someone rambling for like 10 minutes about some book and everyone else is just waiting for him/her to finish. I hate people who tell "stories" in big groups , so rude. I prefer quick back and forth where everyone gets a chance to speak. Lots of people overestimate how interesting their story is to other people. I want to know how to tell people who monopolize group discussion to shut the fuck up so others can speak.
- wonder_er 9y ago
  100% agree. There are members of my family that, if allowed to contribute a sentence, often go on to dominate the conversation for minutes, despite the very obvious boredom and displeasure of everyone else in the conversation. If you come up with an answer to how to tell a conversational monopolist to shut up... please, please share it. I usually just walk away, but that doesn't improve the situation for everyone else.
  - pcunite 9y ago
    One thing that helps me is knowing that these people are Quality Time (according to the Five Love Languages book). Don't confuse Quality Conversation with Time. The best way to stop them is to identify the time that has gone by. I don't have perfect method yet.
    - wonder_er 9y ago
      Hah! That's a good book. My wife and I have running jokes about imaginary love languages. She's pretty sure "chocolate" is a love language. I agree.
  - executesorder66 9y ago
    I just interrupt them, by asking someone else in the group their opinion on what was just said. Rude? Yes, but not as rude as taking over the conversation for longer than you should.
    - 9y ago
Fnoord 9y ago
I like your suggestion but I am not sold on you asking about what someone's favorite documentary is in work situations. You generally want to avoid discussing politics in work situations. How do you cope with that? Has it ever lead to awkward situations?
- wonder_er 9y ago
  good question. I pretty actively try to avoid discussing politics, because... well, it's rarely fruitful. Talking/debating pretty much never convinces anyone of anything. If you want to change someone's mind on something, step 1 tends to be "deeply understand why they think a certain thing", and not only is this totally at odds with casual work conversation, it's not actually appropriate in the vast majority of work relationships. Anyway - gentle redirects out of political topics usually work for me. If they say something like "I just watched a documentary about {bad group} doing {bad thing}, and that's why Trump is an idiot", I'd try something like "oh, where did you see that? Was it on Netflix, or cable TV?" If they say Netflix, then "oh, cool. I just saw a video on how Netflix caches content and uses this thing called a 'chaos monkey' to preempt catastrophic outages. It's really clever... the way they use it is..." Just pick a non-political element out of the conversation, and drive into that. Usually works.

avinassh 9y ago

How about `How to Win Friends and Influence People` by Dale Carnegie? https://www.amazon.com/dp/0091906350 https://www.amazon.com/dp/0091906350

dominotw 9y ago

> weeklong NYE retreat I would like to go to random retreats , where do i find these? Regarding anxiety, I constantly remind myself that people have short memories and even shorter memories about other people. No matter what embarrassing thing that do you do/say will be forgotten very soon by everyone.

StavrosK 9y ago

Not a book, but I've found that asking people what they do and being genuinely interested in it (especially if it's a job you know nothing about) is a treasure trove of interesting information. For example, if you meet a plumber, you can get hours of conversation out of just talking about the various aspects of the jobs. Although I guess it helps that I like learning about other jobs, too, and I tend to ask people to explain things in detail. They usually like that.

TrevorAustin 9y ago
Paul Ford has a great riff on that: https://medium.com/message/how-to-be-polite-9bf1e69e888c https://medium.com/message/how-to-be-polite-9bf1e69e888c > Here’s a polite person’s trick, one that has never failed me. I will share it with you because I like and respect you, and it is clear to me that you’ll know how to apply it wisely: When you are at a party and are thrust into conversation with someone, see how long you can hold off before talking about what they do for a living. And when that painful lull arrives, be the master of it. I have come to revel in that agonizing first pause, because I know that I can push a conversation through. Just ask the other person what they do, and right after they tell you, say: “Wow. That sounds hard.” > Because nearly everyone in the world believes their job to be difficult. I once went to a party and met a very beautiful woman whose job was to help celebrities wear Harry Winston jewelry. I could tell that she was disappointed to be introduced to this rumpled giant in an off-brand shirt, but when I told her that her job sounded difficult to me she brightened and spoke for 30 straight minutes about sapphires and Jessica Simpson. She kept touching me as she talked. I forgave her for that. I didn’t reveal a single detail about myself, including my name. Eventually someone pulled me back into the party. The celebrity jewelry coordinator smiled and grabbed my hand and said, “I like you!” She seemed so relieved to have unburdened herself. I counted it as a great accomplishment. Maybe a hundred times since I’ve said, “wow, that sounds hard” to a stranger, always to great effect. I stay home with my kids and have no life left to me, so take this party trick, my gift to you.
- kaybe 9y ago
  If you think this sounds stupid - try, it works surprisingly well!

betenoire 9y ago

This book worked well at helping me overtime social anxiety. It helped me see how others saw me. Upon reading it, and taking its advice, at least one long-time friend mentioned to my wife at how much happier and friendlier I seemed lately. The Charisma Myth by Olivia Cabane.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

nhhilltopper 9y ago

Not a book, but a great starter question is "So what's on your (movie/book/travel/restaurant/etc.) bucket list this year?"

ww520 9y ago

Regarding anxiety, treat the small talk as a game. Something you're having fun with. Realize that the anxiety is coming from your beliefs, not the situation, and you have the power to change. You are an interesting person with a lot to contribute. Everyone else is a bit anxious inside and needs someone to talk. He would be glad if you strike up a conversation with him and find him interesting. Realize that what's the worse that can happen? If they don't like you, so what? Just like in a game, re-spawn in another spot and have fun again. As for specific techniques, there are the NEWS - News, Event, Weather, and Sport - for non-personal conversational topics. Event is the function you guys are attending that you can have a common shared topic to talk about. Additional topics: Movies, Musics, Mobile, TV, and Games. There are the FORD - Family, Occupation, Recreation, Dreams - for more personal topics to talk about. As for conversation techniques, there're the SPADDE techniques. S is for small talk, as above. P for paraphrasing what the other person has said. Paraphrasing as a form a question to ask for confirmation and show that you're really listening. Paraphrasing as a form of exclamation to show empathy. A for asking questions. Ask questions to open up new topics. Ask follow up questions to lead the topic further. D for disclosure. Disclose something about yourself. Give them a chance to ask you questions. If they don't know how to follow up, go back to S and A. D for deprecation. Add a bit of self-deprecation to the conversation. E for experience. Ask their experience or talk about your experience.

adrianratnapala 9y ago
Thanks for the acronym. I have learned that GNU's not NEWS!

cpeterso 9y ago

Dale Carnegie's How To Win Friends And Influence People is the classic small talk book. TL;DR: people like to talk about themselves and listeners make good conversationalists.

asadjb 9y ago

I just finished listening to "The Like Switch" [1] and it covers a lot of ground on how to hit it off with people. It starts with non-verbal behaviors to look friendly to people when they first see you and then slowly transitions into how to make them like you more when talking to them. I'm on a holiday now and I'm trying to apply some of the things I've learned. I feel like I'm getting good results. A lot of the suggestions are similar to what I've read in other books; especially the "How to win friends and influence people", which signals to me that these things are core principles rather than tricks found out by individual authors. One thing I've learned from these books. All of these techniques need you to have a degree of self-confidence in-order to apply them. That's something I'm working on right now, but overall I think these books (and similar ones) have a lot of good info to offer for shy non-communicative people like me. [1]: https://www.audible.com/pd/Self-Development/The-Like-Switch-Audiobook/B00RKRDOM2/ https://www.audible.com/pd/Self-Development/The-Like-Switch-...

ShabbosGoy 9y ago

You just have to realize that small talk, especially among those who don’t know each other well, is stateless. There is no beginning and no end. It’s just talking for the sake of killing time, introducing yourself, etc...

spodek 9y ago

Yes. If it doesn't break any rules to mention mine: Leadership Step by Step -- https://www.amazon.com/Leadership-Step-Become-Person-Others/dp/0814437931 https://www.amazon.com/Leadership-Step-Become-Person-Others/... -- in particular Chapter 17, on how to make a meaningful connection. Note that one of its foundations is that developing social, emotional, expressive, performance-based skills takes practice and rehearsal to go from mechanical practicing, like playing scales, to effortless, genuine, authentic self-expression. The same as in learning to act, sing, play an instrument, play a sport, military, and so on. The book gives you exercises. It's not for everyone. Just reading it will help you appreciate the skills. Practice will lead to growth.