Where to Practice Small Talk When You're Not Ready for the Room Yet

Confidence in conversation isn't a personality trait — it's a skill, and skills get built through reps. JP maps out the low-stakes training grounds where you can sharpen your small talk before the boardroom, the conference, or the client dinner is on the line. Practical, specific, and zero fluff — this one gives you a weekly practice plan you can start today.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to Lee with Confidence. I'm JP Warren. Every episode we take a theme from our Monday morning leadership call and apply it to real life scenarios. So you can build your confidence, crush your imposter syndrome, and step into the leader you actually want to be. Short, real, straight to the point. Let's get into it. Welcome back to Lead with Confidence with your host, JP Warren. We've been diving into the art of small talk. Small talk is one of those things that no one likes to do, but it is so crucial to connect with people, right? To build those bridges. And listen, if you're just tuning into Lead with Confidence, these are 10-minute daily episodes where we're gonna give you frameworks to navigate and develop and build your soft skills. And why is that so important? Because 85% of our career success is our soft skills. And if I'm giving you 10 minutes about giving some real world frameworks on how to actually take this and apply it to your personal and professional careers, take 15 seconds, come over and leave a review. I love looking at where people are tuning in from. I love hearing the feedback. That keeps me inspired to keep uh putting these out and to hopefully help you in your career. All right, let's dive into it. One thing that I'm sure that you're familiar with is a lot of people are familiar with this. It doesn't matter if it's small talk, it doesn't matter if it's presentation skills, it doesn't matter if it's your starting jiu-jitsu. A lot of people are waiting for the perfect moment before they start developing their skill sets. Like, oh, I'm gonna wait until I'm in shape before I start jujitsu, or oh, I'm gonna wait till I have a good presentation coming up before I actually work on my presentation skills. Soft skills, that's exactly what they are. It's a skill set. Like any skill set, they need to be learned, practiced, and mastered. So you don't just walk into a networking event thinking you're gonna crush it without doing the reps you do before, right? It's like, oh, I'm gonna go to the gym, I'm only gonna go to the gym only when I can lift uh 200, you know, 200 pounds. I'm gonna bench 200 pounds. You gotta get there through reps, through going to the gym and showing up consistently. So now we're gonna talk about some quick ways for you to develop your small talk skills. And listen, everyone doesn't like small talk because number one, you think that there has to be a goal with small talk. There doesn't have to be a goal of small talk. The second thing is people often get stuck in this um conversation killers of, you know, how are you? What do you do? Where do you work? And those things are those kind of questions are immediately transactional and they stop conversation in their tracks. So we're gonna talk about today on actually how to develop some tricks and tips to level up and start strengthening that muscle to start engaging uh in conversation. I want to tell you this right now. Just like a crucial conversation, just like a networking event, just like a presentation, just like jujitsu, just like anything in life, the perfect moment is never there. The perfect timing is never there. The ducks, you know, aren't always in a row. So, how do we actually get out of our comfort zone and start engaging in these small conversations and feel comfortable with that? So that way, the next networking event we walk into, we know what we're doing. We know we're confident in our small talk and we are able to connect with those around us. All right. So the problem is most people think about they're gonna only improve in networking at networking events, right? And then after the network events is over, they're gonna go back to their office and get back into business mode, right? Without, again, continuously working on those reps. The most successful people that connect with people, people call it the gift of gab. Nobody is born with a gift of gab. People develop it over time just by getting out of their comfort zone and start developing these small conversation skill sets. All right. So again, um, not again, I'm just I'm kind of uh reading off my notes right here. So let's talk about, let's let's dive into this. All right. I because a lot of times, you know, I'll go out uh in public, you know, my daughter's always like, you know, dad, you're always making best friends. Is that your bestie? You just make another bestie, you know, like you're always making, you know, you're always talking to people. That's an ongoing joke in this house, but it's obviously for a reason, all right? So I I go out, I start talking to people, random people, um, whether it's, you know, at the grocery store or stuff like that, just to honestly work on my skill set. But also, uh, there might be something where I might connect with this person or I might brighten their day, or they might brighten my day, or you just never know the magic behind connecting with people. So let's start off. There's four levels of, I guess, uh risk when it comes to engaging uh in these uh, you know, these soft skill, small, these not soft, these small talk conversations. All right. So let's start off with the the least, the least risk, no professional stakes, level of the small talk. These are the strangers that we bump into the street. These are the buristos, these are the people uh in line at a grocery store, these are the people checking us out at a grocery store at the movie theater. These are strangers, okay? These are strangers that we have to start engaging in small talk. So I challenge a lot of people out there, when you are out in public, don't have your phone out. Don't have your headphones in because you are not only sending a signal. Remember, body language is 55% how we communicate, you're sending a signal that you don't want to connect. I encourage you, if you are in line, if you are uh at a coffee shop line, grocery store line, put your phone away and start working on your small talk. All right. Some things right here is like what I'll do, I'll be in line and uh the grocery person's checking, uh checking me out. Not like that, but they're, you know, they're checking me out. And I will say, uh, you know, hey, how's it going? Like all that stuff. And I'll say, you know, do you like it busy? Is it busy or slow? What do you like about that? What do you kind of I'll just start kind of like talking to them and just kind of, you know, try to get some personal information. We talked about that. Like, what do you what would what hobbies are you into when you get out of work? Or or do you enjoy it when it's you know busy or when it's slow out? All you're doing is you're practicing on getting out of your comfort zone and breaking that ice, right? You're you're just breaking that ice to start that conversation. Okay. So that is so these are strangers on the street, these are people in line, these are people that you kind of interact with every day. It is a great opportunity just to learn how to have these small talk conversations, okay? Now, the next rung on leveling up your small talk, you know, you start doing that, you know, daily, you're out there, you start working on your small talk. The next uh level is the internal conversations within your organization, okay? These are people that you've seen over months, over years, that you really just don't know who they are, right? They're familiar faces. You may ride an elevator up with them, or you may pass from the hallway, you may see them at a company gathering, but you've never really connected. This is such a great opportunity to go across the line, introduce yourself, and to start those small talk conversations. Maybe ask them, hey, listen, with everything going right now, what's what's what's what's frustrating you right now with your work or how long you've been here? You know, what brought you to this company? Like, what's been your experience before? Again, small talk, treat this like a networking event. All you're doing is engaging and building that bridge with a person that probably works with you, you know, at the same company, the internal, uh, the internal, you know, network. But again, you have to build that network in order to. I don't know, I'm going off the networking side of things. I'm talking about small talk here. So again, you're just getting more comfortable engaging these conversations. Again, these are people that you see, maybe not on a daily basis, but they're in your organization. So again, start building those roads. I remember I had a mentor uh when I was at my previous, when I first started uh my career, and he said, listen, relationships, I think you got to think about this as a huge train. Relationships is the only thing that greases the track. So go across, talk to accounting, go across, talk to HR, talk to operations, talk to supply chain, start building your internal network at your company. Okay. Now, the next ring about uh the next ring to start engaging in these uh the small talk to actually deepen would be your service providers, your vendors, right? Normally these are transactional conversations, like what can you do for me? What can I do for you? Let's talk about price, let's move on. These are a great way to kind of move beyond the transactional conversations and really get kind of deeper, right? Maybe talk about like what's kind of frustrating them about uh uh the projects that they're seeing, or what's some big uh industry market uh trends that they're kind of seeing on their side. And you just start kind of talking like that, who knows where that conversation's gonna go? All right. So we have number one, these are the strangers at throughout life, right? These are the baristas, these are the people at the grocery store, these are people in line, these are people at the movie theater. The next level is your internal organization, right? Who in your internal team have you not talked to at your organization, maybe from a different department? All right. And the third one would be the service providers and the vendors, trying to, like I guess, uh, again, moving beyond the transactional conversations. Now, the top ring. This is this is kind of what you've done. These are the these, this is where you, this is the game, right? This is game time. I don't know why I'm getting a brain fart right now, but this is game time. You have done 50 reps, right? You've talked to strangers, right? You've talked to people inside your company, you worked on your small talk skills with the service providers and the vendors you're using. Now it comes down to the actual event, all right? These are, I'm not gonna say high risk at all because connecting with people is not high risk, but this is professionally tied to your to your uh to your performance, to your network, right? So you want to show up at these networking events ready for it, right? You want to feel confident, ready for it, that you've worked on your small talk skills. So these are the networking events. This is what we talked about in the previous episodes on how to actually have better conversations than the standard, how are you? Who do you work for? What do you do? Remember, that just closes people off and you sound like everybody else. The point of these networking events is to connect with people, authentically connect with people, not just have these transactional surface level conversations. So if you start working on your reps, again, there's no perfect time to do, you know, to start working on small talk. This is something that you need to carry out throughout your day. I challenge you, when you get out there, when you turn this off, the next time you're out there, put your phone, don't have your phone around. I mean, have your phone on to you, but don't take it out, right? And look for an opportunity to connect with people. Number one, you don't know if someone's going through something, you might brighten their day, okay? Number two, you don't know this person that you're talking to, and they might have a great recommendation to whether it's a new restaurant, a mechanic, or maybe a doctor that uh you know someone in your world that they're dealing with something, right? You just don't know the magic of connecting with people. And I think we need more connection in this world. All right. So go out there, start connecting, start talking to your, start working your internal networks uh just through small talk. Again, there's no goal with small talk. Rather than just connecting with people, okay? And then you go to your service fighters and then the day of the event, get after it. Keep working on your skill sets because soft skills is something that can be learned, practiced, and mastered. And I want you to succeed. I know you can succeed, but again, I don't know why I keep saying, but again. I think that's my filler words. So I teach, I mean, that's kind of funny. It's ironic because I teach public speaking, I teach communication skills, and I'm still working on my skill set. So go out there, start your small talk, start making your besties, as my daughter calls it, and and it just see what happens next. All right. Uh, I challenge you and I encourage you, and I think you can get out there and do it. That's your framework for the day. Go lead with it. I'm JP Warren. Lead with confidence.