Alison Cheperdak

So like if you're at a wedding, you can comment on what you see, like the flowers, the architecture, the music, the experience, how you know the couple, how you know the family.

Like if you ever are at an event, like let's say you're at a birthday and your childhood friend is turning, you know, however old, and then there's someone else there that's a graduate school friend.

You can share memories and sweet stories from-

knowing the person, even though you're just meeting for the first time.

I also think it's helpful to be prepared with some topics.

So I write about this in my book.

One of my favorite studies that's cited in Charles Duhigg's book, Super Communicators, is about this index card study that was done at Harvard Business School, where they took a whole bunch of people who had anxiety in networking and social conversations, and they told them to write down some topics on an index card that they could talk about if an awkward silence happened.

And

They did that.

So they jotted down some topics, put them on an index card, put them in their back pocket, went to a networking event, like a cocktail party.

And not only did most people not talk about those topics, but just the activity of preparing made them feel so much more comfortable in conversation.

So something that I recommend is just have some things ready to talk about, like the kind of things that you could talk about if you had to take a plane tonight and you had to say something to the person that was right next to you.

So, yes, we talked about money, sex, politics, religion, and health status being the ones that you don't want to talk about, but that leaves plenty of things, like things that you're genuinely interested in.

Another mistake people make is that they think, okay, what can I talk about that's going to make me sound smart?

Or what can I talk about that's going to make me sound really impressive?

And

While sometimes the result of a conversation is that people are impressed by you and they do think you're smart, if that's your singular goal, usually the conversations don't go super well.

They feel disjointed.

They don't feel like relationally connected.

It's much better to think,