How can we use small talk effectively to forge meaningful bonds without boring ourselves or others?

The answer lies in an article in last month’s The Guardian newspaper, where social anxiety coach Claire Eastham discussed how she had changed her approach to small talk when meeting new people. Eastham explained how she has always found small talk “boring at best, stressful at worst”, and this is reflected in a lot of conversations I’ve had over the years.

Small talk is often seen as mundane and annoying, yet it is also the glue that builds relationships and holds them together. I often urge people to move away from transactional, agenda-driven conversations if they want to build authentic human connections. We do that through small talk.

However, that small talk doesn’t have to be mundane. In her article, Eastham outlines how she made a commitment to herself to proactively make conversations more interesting, running the experiment for one month. “My rules were simple”, she explained in the article. “Without being rude, I would quickly deflect all questions about wellbeing, weather, transport or children’s academic achievements and offer instead something I found genuinely interesting.

“When a barista asked, ‘How are you enjoying the sun?’ I pivoted to, ‘I like spring, but autumn is my favourite season. What about you?’ At a writer’s event, when a woman commented that her kids were out of school, I asked: ‘What was your favourite subject to study?’

Eastham was modelling the curiosity that I have talked about many times. People are interested in people who are interested in them, so by throwing the conversation back to the other person, in the form of an open, curious question, Eastham was creating deeper engagement.

And that was borne out by the results Eastham experienced. She found that people seemed relieved to be invited into a more stimulating conversation, and conversations became less stiff and more unpredictable. Most importantly, she learned more about the people she engaged with, creating even more points of connection.

Scrapping small talk isn’t the answer to making conversations more engaging. Making small talk bigger is. Ask questions, be curious, be authentic and be unpredictable. By doing so, you’ll find that more of the conversations you have will open up, be more memorable, and you, in turn, will be more memorable for the person you are speaking to.