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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.

Ross McCammon
Forge
Published in
4 min readNov 21, 2019

Illustration: Heeje Min Heo

This story is part of How to Talk to Anyone, Forge’s guide to moving past the chitchat and truly connecting.

IIt’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.

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Forge
Forge

Published in Forge

A former publication from Medium on personal development. Currently inactive and not taking submissions.

Ross McCammon
Ross McCammon

Written by Ross McCammon

Author, Works Well With Others: Crucial Skills in Business No One Ever Teaches You // writing about creativity, work, and human behavior, in a useful way

Responses (17)

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Great article. I do see a small gap though. What if you’re the more quiet, timid or shy person and most of the others around you have very forceful personalities? How would you get around that so you can be heard as well? I understand getting…

In this age of millenial phone absorbtion intertwined with a perceived awkwardness involving real time human interactions, this article is especially important. I am 60, and a big fan of talking face to face with all types of strangers in social…

Nice suggestions the key one being treat everyone with respect and interest, whatever their age.