I don't love admitting to it, but I'm not the greatest conversationalist—not that I'm a total bumbling weirdo or a unstoppable egoist.
It's thankfully not so dire as that: I'm occasionally awkward, a bit self-indulgent with my anecdotes, and ask too few questions. Things could be better!
So it was with reservations that I watched a video from HBR on "How to Get Good at Small Talk, and Even Enjoy It."
Some of the advice I had heard before, but other tidbits were new. One of the latter, which I've already had the opportunity to try out, is the "white flag rule."
The rule is this: When you want to end a conversation, don't. Instead, tell the other person that you want to end it but ask them one more question:
Hey, so I need to run to work in a sec, but, before I go, tell me how your planning for the Grand Canyon is going.
The alternatives to this are to either end the conversation outright (not fun) or let the conversation keep running until one or all of you has lost all interest (also not fun).
Telling the other person that you are ending the conversation but not quite yet—-affords you both shared knowledge of the pending end of the conversation, so you can move to the end together.
