The Awesome Power of Small Talk
Small interactions can have a huge impact on our state of mind… and the world
This article was originally published on LinkedIn in October of 2021. I’m reposting it here as part of moving my writing to my own platform…
Let me paint a scene for you… It’s mid-morning on Monday, and I’m in the middle of a mini-panic attack brought on by a TED Talk about our climate and the fossil fuel industry that I’d listened to on my morning walk. It was incredibly delivered with passion, statistics and... it was utterly depressing. Now I have my 3rd meeting of the day so far where I have to throw on a version of Rob that isn’t freaking out and keep the plates spinning. Then something magic happened… The guy I was meeting with said 6 amazing words when I made small talk and asked the generic “How’s it going?”
“I’m just not feeling it today.”
Uhhhh what? You’re supposed to say “I’m fine, how are you?”
It was… refreshing. Seriously... I thought it was just me! I didn’t have to pretend to be in a great mood anymore. I felt so much more relaxed. I was still having a mini-panic attack, but I wasn't alone in my mood. The meeting did NOT devolve into a bitch session. We ended up having a pretty good meeting (as meetings go LOL). We stayed on topic, and left room to continue the discussion after meeting with our respective teams.
Great corporate moment there, Rob…
Really, snarky voice in my head? This was, indeed, a special corporate moment and I thought you’d be more supportive. When you work in a massive organization, it’s not often you get to meet with a cross functional partner about an important customer facing initiative that is currently being designed and implemented on the fly who lets some of their true emotion through in a work environment. I am truly grateful for their candor. It helped me break the spell of my doom induced panic.
Hey, how’s it going?
Hi, how are you?
How have you been?
What have you been up to?
What’s shaking?
What’s up?
Small talk… We live in a world where it’s rude NOT to use some variation on one of these greetings, and yet… it’s also considered weird to actually answer the question.
Seriously… How would you feel if you saw me sitting in my favorite coffee shop and you came up to me and said… "Hey Rob, how’s it going? And I came back with… “You know… I’m not doing too well today. I made the mistake of looking at a news feed this morning and it sent me down a rabbit hole of doom scrolling, and I can’t shake the feeling that we're all screwed.“
Uhhhhh Dude… nobody wants to hear your problems! They’ve got their own crap to deal with!
That’s very true Snarky… Negative thoughts are contagious and people spewing them into the world are NOT fun at parties. However, continuously pretending that everything is awesome is exhausting and not emotionally sustainable. It’s like trying to run on adrenalin… at some point you’re going to crash.
Why do we start a conversation off with a question nobody really wants to know the answer to?
Contemplating this “Seinfeldian” question makes me think of animal interactions. When two dogs meet, there is a whole lot of sniffing of private parts going on. Dogs have incredible noses and can tell a lot about who they’re sniffing... Are you friendly? Are you healthy? Are you stressed? Do you have bacon? Have you had bacon recently? Where’s the bacon? Squirrel!!!
Dogs are soooooo much more perceptive than people.
For better or worse, our noses don’t give us that much information, so we have to resort to small talk. That bland, innocuous “Hi, how are you?” is the human equivalent of a dog sniff without the awkward nose positioning. But what are we actually getting from that “sniff”? We can sorta read body language, and vocal tone to make a snap inference about a person’s mental state. But, not nearly as accurately as a dog who can probably tell what we had for our last three meals AND if we were late on our last credit card payment from one casual nose bump.
Humans have almost nothing to go on. A little bit of body language and some audio cues. Even less if the person is wearing a mask. Soooooo we keep on asking a silly question that we don’t really want to know the answer to. Which brings us to the real question…
When should we really want to hear about someone’s well being?
It kinda sucks to say this, but you have to be selective.
Let’s face it… most of us don’t have the emotional room to truly care deeply about the emotional state of every person we meet. You might be a loving and compassionate person but we evolved in a world where we might only know a couple dozen people our entire lives, and now there are soooooooooooooooo many people. If you have a job where you talk to people all day, you’re expanding your network by a couple dozen per month or even per week. You’ll run yourself into the dirt trying to take in everyone’s emotional health.
You can’t afford to get emotionally involved with every contact, so you have to decide ahead of a conversation exactly how deep to go. Sometimes this is a split second decision (usually in line at the grocery store). But often, we have some prep time before we engage with someone and we need to ask ourselves a question… the question is NOT “Do I care about this person’s emotion?” instead the question is “Can I afford to care about this person’s emotions?” or “Do I need to care about this person’s emotions?”
Dayummm Rob that is cold blooded!!
No, Snarky, it’s not cold blooded. It’s a survival tactic. I truly want to care about the wellbeing of every person I meet, but trying to do that would kill me. So, I calculate. How much can I afford? Some people like my wife or son, or other immediate family get max involvement every time. Or, at least I try to give that max... Sometimes, I’m just too exhausted even for them. Other relationships like friends or people at work or in the side activities I work on don’t get the same level as family.
“Is everything OK?” (raised eyebrow and tilt of the head)
This is something I’ll use when I really need to know how a person is doing. When someone has been dark for a while and they finally resurface. Or maybe I know that they’ve had challenges recently. I want to actually know the answer, and the body language I use says so.
“No, really… How are you doing?”
“Tell me about how you’re doing?
“What’s going on in your world?”
Coming back full circle to the meeting example from the top of the article, at the moment he said “I’m just not feeling it today.” I made a snap call to ask him what was up. Yes, I was having a panic attack of my own, but it seemed unusual for this person to let his guard down like that. I wanted to make sure it wasn’t serious. Knock on wood, it wasn’t. He told me about his daughter not wanting to go to school and instead sleep in on a Monday. That put him in a funky mood because he wanted to sleep in too… LOL Kids are smarter than us.
So there you have it… The awesome power of small talk... Not a huge revelation, but small things are more important than they seem. These little interactions have a huge impact on our state of mind, and our state of mind has a huge impact on our entire world.
What are some of the ways YOU use to engage or deflect emotional involvement in your day to day interactions? Let us know in the comments!
