Beyond Small Talk
How to Talk to Anyone
The holidays are a time of warmth, cheer, and awkwardness. Here’s how to enjoy even the trickiest conversations.
This story is part of How to Talk to Anyone, Forge’s guide to moving past the chitchat and truly connecting.
It’s all about the first five minutes. This conversation is going to go a lot more smoothly if you treat your second cousin Jenna’s boyfriend as the most important person in the world for exactly that length of time. It’s long enough to take small talk to medium talk (holiday gatherings are festivals of medium talk), but not long enough to exhaust either you or Jenna’s boyfriend (it’s Kyle, right?).
Because, pace yourself. Holiday gatherings are marathons. They are rooms full of people you must talk to but aren’t necessarily equipped to talk to and maybe don’t even want to talk to. “How are you?” won’t get you far.
Awkwardness is a guarantee. And moving past it is going to require more than just warmth and cheer (and spiked punch). It’s going to require curiosity about whoever you encounter: your political opposite, the person four times your age, the painfully shy college student, that seven-year-old over there who has stared at you for easily 10 minutes straight. Easily.
