"They could have said "Not too much",
and we'd both have watched the numbers count down.
I find small talk a chore. I’m not terrible at it, but it doesn’t come naturally.
I’d much rather open with a bigger question, like “What did you want to be when you grew up?” Most people find that confronting as an opener, so I save it for later.
A while ago I got into the lift with a colleague I know mostly from work functions, and not so much from the office itself. Eight floors. Enough time for exactly one exchange, and not enough time to recover from it if it goes badly.
My default in a lift used to be a nod and a smile that only used the mouth, then a look at the numbers above the door. It took about a second and ticked the box of being polite. Simple enough.
On this occasion though, I felt myself wanting to know this person a little more, as they seemed nice and we hadn’t spoken about ourselves much before, just work stuff.
I started with an old faithful, and asked what they had on for the weekend… and they lit up.
Family was coming to visit for the first time in a long while, and they were really looking forward to it. They told me who was coming, what the plan was, and that they’d been getting the house ready. The whole thing took about twenty seconds and was completely genuine. Then the doors opened, and we went in different directions.
I thought about it for the rest of the day, and later when I passed them outside, we stopped and talked some more about their plans.
I can’t speak for them, but I felt so glad I’d asked. They chose to answer the standard question with something they were actually pleased about. They could have said the standard “Not too much,” and we’d both have watched the numbers count down.
Their response stayed with me, and I wondered how many other times I’d instead just smiled, not asked, and what I’d missed out on because of that decision.
These days I go beyond the nod and smile, and sometimes I do get the “Not too much,” and that’s ok. I know there’s sometimes more, and that I might get to see someone light up and be so rapt to share some news.
I can do small talk, and even if it stays at that level, I can be ok with it.
Three things to try.
Ask the reliable question anyway.
It doesn’t have to be a good one. The quality of the opener has almost nothing to do with what comes back.
Answer with something true.
When someone hands us the throwaway version, we can put something real in it. That’s the move that did all the work in this story, and it wasn’t mine.
Go one past the minimum.
Whatever our version of the nod is, take one step beyond it. Once, with one person, and see what the other side does with it.