Shanli Liu shares three moves for better small talk: ask action-oriented questions about what people are doing, phrase them open-ended so they can't just say yes or no, and know when to end the conversation instead of forcing it.
Here's some tricks I use to never struggle with small talk. Number 1, I stay away from static questions like, "How's home? How's work?" Those are boring topics that just sit there. Instead, I make my questions action-oriented. Those are questions about the doing, like, "What did y'all do this weekend? What's been keeping you busy?" Action questions make it much more interesting. Number 2, how I ask that question matters. Notice that I asked, "What's been keeping you busy?" If I had just said, "You've been staying busy?" That's just a yes or a no answer. Instead, I open it up by asking, "What has been keeping you busy?" Here's another one. "Do you have any weekend plans?" That's closed-ended, yes or no. "Where you going this weekend?" That's much more open, much more interesting. Number 3: If you've run out of things to say, then you've run out of interest in the conversation. Rather than forcing it and the other person noticing, just politely end it. So try that and follow me.
