Transcript of How to Master the Art of Conversation.

That is a skill that you can practice. It's not a gift that you either have or do not have. And so today I'm going to give you a few different ways to turn small talk into real connection with other people. Because a conversation that could seem insignificant could become the beginning of something that changes your life. So let's get into it, okay? There's a researcher at the University of Chicago named Nicholas Epley, and he and two other researchers ran a series of experiments where they paired up strangers and had them talk.

Some pairs got into shallow small talk questions and answers, and some got deeper questions that they could go into. The kind of stuff that you'd like normally only talk about with a really, really close friend. And before these conversations started, the people predicted that the deep conversations would be awkward. They thought that the other person wouldn't want to go deep or wouldn't care to go deep. And they thought they'd have trouble connecting that deep with someone who is a complete stranger.

And the results actually showed that they were completely wrong. When people had a shallow conversation with one stranger and a deep conversation with another, most of them expected to prefer the shallow conversation. But at the end of this study, they ended up preferring the deep conversations with a stranger. Now think about that for a second, because what you have to actually look at and understand in plain English is if somebody is bored in a conversation with you, the other person is not bored by you.

They're not bored of you. They're bored of the normal BS shallow-level conversations that everybody's having all day, every day. And I want you to understand, people actually want to go deep, if you believe it or not. They're standing there wanting for somebody, anybody to go first and invite them into a real and deep conversation. And I really believe that with the rise of AI and people on their phones all the time, people are just starving for real, true connection with another person.

And I want you to understand that you can be the type of person that brings that. And if you do, people are absolutely going to love talking to you. And for me, I am a shy person. I am an introvert. And I started in sales when I was 19 years old. And when I started in sales, I realized I need to get good at talking to people. I need to really try to get better at connecting with other people. Because I was shy, 19 years old, and going into homes and demonstrating a product, a sales product that I was trying to sell.

And I had to learn at 19 years old how to try to connect with 40, 50, 60-year-old homeowners. And it really challenged me to learn how to engage in meaningful conversations at a very, very young age. And that is a skill that I think completely changed the course of my life. And once I realized that almost everybody is waiting for permission to go deeper, small talk stopped being something that I dreaded. And it actually started to become something that I actually looked forward to.

And so here's how you break the normal, mundane, everyday script that everybody follows so that you can actually be somebody who masters small talk, okay? Number one is stop saying good. This is the simplest thing. If I can give you this and you can start using this, you'll notice every conversation that you have change. When somebody asks you, "How are you?" or "How's your day been going?" the default answer for everybody is good. And I want you to understand that good is a dead end.

Good does not go anywhere. And when they ask you how you are and you say good, and then you ask them how they are, what do they say? They say good. So you've basically handed them nothing. And there's nowhere really to go at that point in time in the conversation. And that's usually how conversations stop. And so most people think that the problem with small talk is the questions that they ask. Questions are a part of it, but half of the problem is actually the answers that you give don't go anywhere.

And so I want you to do this thing where it's called giving somebody a loose thread, okay? A little detail that the other person can grab onto and pull is the way you want to think about it. So instead of saying good when someone asks how you're doing, say something like, "Honestly, it's pretty good. I'm running on four hours of sleep and a dangerous amount of coffee." Okay, that's a different answer, isn't it? It kind of makes somebody have opportunities to ask you questions. You've given them something that they can grab onto, like why only four hours of sleep?

Give them the job and then try to give them a little thread. So people always ask, "What do you do?" So I want you to plan right now, what is the thread that you can start to give people? So instead of saying, "Oh, I'm in sales," you can say something like, "I'm in sales," which basically means that I get paid to hear the word no like 40 times a day. Really, there's a little bit of something there. I could ask a question around that if I'm in a conversation with you. Or instead of saying, "I'm a nurse," you could say, "I'm a nurse and I work nights. So honestly, I have no idea what day it is right now."

You're giving them the answer, but then you're giving them a loose thread that they can grab onto if they want. And now they've got something they can pull on. You hear no 40 times a day? How do you not lose your mind? Okay, let's keep going. Or you're a nurse and you don't get much sleep. How do you even sleep if you're a night nurse? How does that work? A loose thread is an invitation. You're allowing them to pull you into another question. You want to leave them with what's called an open loop and allow them to keep it going.

If you don't give them a loose thread, no conversation. And so your answers should actually invite them to go deeper, to intrigue them in some way. So that's the first thing I want you to understand. But that's only half of it, because once they hand you the thread back, you have to know what to do with it. And so that brings us to number two. Number two is to follow the spark. There was a researcher at Harvard named Alison Wood Brooks, and she studied conversations between strangers. And they also studied speed daters. And what they found was that people who asked more questions were better liked.

So here's the thing. It wasn't just any question. It was what they call a follow-up question, which we all should know what a follow-up question is, right? So speed daters who asked more follow-up questions to the people that they were in a speed dating with were more likely to get a second date. A follow-up question is proof that you're actually listening to the other person. And people, this is a key thing I want you to get today. People are so wanting to be seen and heard nowadays. But the problem is that what do most people do instead?

They basically start taking the conversation and make it about them. So say, for instance, you talk to somebody and somebody says, "I just got back from Italy." And then you go, "Oh my God, I went to Italy two years ago and we went to this little place in Florence and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." And now it was about them, but now it's your story. They call this conversational narcissism, where everything becomes about you. Listen, I did this wrong for years. I completely screwed this up. But what is basically happening in this situation is they said, "Oh, I just got back from Italy."

They're handing you a thread and you basically took that thread, you tied it around yourself, and you made it all about you. And like I said, I've done it before. You've done it. Everybody's done it. We all want to seem interesting. And so we try to bring in our cool stories. But what did you do instead? You made it about you. What should you do? You should follow the spark. Find what makes somebody—there's a little spark behind what they say. "We went to Italy." "Oh my gosh, where did you go?"

"Oh my gosh, what was your favorite part? What was your favorite food? What was your favorite sight? How long were you there?" And you start asking them questions about them, follow-up questions about them and their trip to Italy. And so you want to notice the spark when you're talking to somebody. I want you to watch the moment when their energy changes or their body shifts in some sort of way, or they talk a little bit faster, or they smile, or they lean in, or they get excited about something small.

They give you a little bit more detail than you asked for. That is the spark. That is the thing that they actually want to talk about. So pay attention to someone's energy and ask them follow-up questions around where you notice their energy shift. So let's say somebody says, "I'm an accountant, but on the weekends I coach my daughter's softball team." Most people ask about accounting. Do you really think they want to talk about accounting? No. Which one do you think they'd rather talk about?

The spark is the softball. And so go one level down. Ask them a question. "How did you end up coaching softball? What's the hardest part about coaching softball? What's been your favorite moment this season?" And so what you're doing is you're asking them questions about the spark. And now this person who was a stranger two minutes ago is lit up talking to you. And so one of the key things in this is when you ask somebody questions and follow-up questions and you follow the spark, is a key phrase that one of my first mentors taught me when communicating with people is stop trying to be interesting and start trying to be interested.

And if you do that in a conversation, people will completely change around you. Okay, that's number two. Number three is to guess and don't ask. This is a fun one, okay? There's a problem with too many questions is it starts to kind of feel like an interview. And so when somebody says something, you can actually make a guess instead of asking them a question. So let's say someone says, instead of going out, "Where did you grow up?" "Oh, I grew up in Ohio." "Cool. Do you have kids?" Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Same old low-level conversation. In fact, that's not really even a conversation.

That's more of an interview. So instead of always asking questions, I want you to actually make a guess and make it a little bit more fun sometimes. So instead of just saying, "Where are you from?" you could say something like, "Okay, hey, let me guess something about you. You're not from here, are you?" And they're like, "No." "Okay, you've got some East Coast energy, am I right?" And here's the thing. It doesn't matter if you're right. Actually, to be fully honest with you, it's actually better if you're wrong because people love correcting you. And they're like, "Oh no, I'm actually from Minnesota." And you're like, "Minnesota?

Okay? So that's number three. Number four, go first. You have to be the person that's willing to go first. If you remember the research that I first spoke about, about going deep with people, everybody is standing there waiting for somebody to go deeper. But people are not going to do it themselves most of the time. You have to go first. Most people are afraid of going first. And so we've got to be the ones, if we want to get better at small talk, that are willing to go and be a little bit deeper first. I'm not saying that you need to trauma dump on somebody that you just met.

"Hey, nice to meet you. My dad never told me he loved me." That's not what I'm asking for. I'm just talking about just go one notch deeper than the conversation currently is. That's it. Just one notch. Picture like you're at a networking event. Instead of going like, "Oh, the weather's been crazy recently, huh?" You can go, "Hey, can I be honest with you? I hate these things. I never know what to do for the first 10 minutes." And if you do that and you go a little bit, you make yourself a little bit vulnerable, watch what happens. They're going to go, "Oh my God, me too.

These things are always so awkward." And in one sentence, you're not two strangers anymore. You're like two people sharing the same secret. Why does this work? Well, because people reciprocate. When you open the door just a little bit, they will walk through it. And think about how many conversations you've had where both of you were thinking the exact same thing, but neither one of you said it. And so one rule that I love to live by is if there's an elephant in the room, call out the elephant. Call out the feeling. Call out the awkwardness. Call out anything that you both might be thinking.

Vulnerability in a conversation is not weakness. Vulnerability is permission for the other person to meet you in that place of vulnerability. Okay? That's number four. And the number five is to leave on a high. This is a really, really big one that nobody really talks about or even knows. There's a researcher named Adam Mastroianni, and he was at Harvard at the time when he did this research. He studied over 900 conversations, and he asked people when they actually wanted the conversation to end and when they thought the other person wanted the conversation to end.

Only 2% of conversations ended when both people actually wanted the conversation to end. 2%. On average, the gap between how long a conversation lasted and how long the people wanted it to last was about half of the conversation. So that means conversations are just like, "Oh, they're going on and they're going on and they're going on." And so people had almost no idea when the other person wanted to wrap it up because we all want to be polite and we don't want to be awkward and just walk away from someone when it starts to get boring.

And so here's what that means. Most conversations don't end. They bleed out and die a slow death. And so you have to understand that awkward ending is the last part that they're remembering. That's what they're going to remember about the conversation. And so you actually want to leave while it's still good. You want to leave the conversation on a high note with that person wanting just a little bit more. If you hit a big laugh or you hit a high point, that's your exit. Get the fuck out.

That's the way you want to think about it. You're basically leaving a thread for next time. And you could say something like, "Hey, I'm going to let you go, but I need to hear about how the softball season ends, okay?" And that's the cliffhanger. You want to leave people on a cliffhanger. When you walk away, that person is more likely to come back up to you at that networking event and be like, "Hey, let me get your number. Let's go get coffee sometime." Or you could go back up to them later on and say, "Hey, let me get your number. It was fun talking to you. Let's go get some coffee sometime." And it's a cliffhanger is what you're leaving. That's the reason why you watch the next episode of a great show.

All great TV series have mastered the cliffhanger at the end of every episode. And it's the part that makes you go, "Oh, shit. Now I got to wait an entire week to find out what happens." It ended right when you wanted more. And you want to leave them wanting more in the conversation with you, not wanting out. And the reason why this matters is because every important person in your life was once a stranger, like your best friend, your spouse, your biggest client. Every single one of those relationships started with somebody that you didn't know and somebody probably breaking the script naturally.

And so how many of those people do you think maybe you've just walked right past in your everyday life because you're stuck on, "Good, how's your day going?" And so I want you to start to think about this and start to think about this mastering small talk with people. What if you started to focus on small talk and going deeper with every conversation that you had? How different could your connections be over the next year? And then next time you're in a conversation and you feel that pause and that awkward silence, go deeper.