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Small Talk

If small talk is not the hallmark of emotional intelligence then I have just about never met an emotionally intelligent person in all the years that I have worked. Many follow the rule of being interested in you and what you have to say - though whenever I have received that treatment, it's made me a bit uncomfortable. I am not that disproportionately interesting than the other person so it seems the tactic is to get me to fill the air in the room without reciprocating. That makes me chat about non-consequential, low-value stuff. If some of it can be amusing even better - filling up space whole being somewhat entertaining seems to be the job the person who acts interested in me has doled out. 

The conversations I have enjoyed the most are the ones where the balance is great to the point of being perfect. I am as interested in learning about the other party as they are about me. We go through a range of items and that gives us both a broader understanding of the other beyond the current context. I might recall that conversation on a later date, might tell someone else a minor but interesting detail I had heard. 

Small talk done right can be a catalyst for switching between topics. Talking about the weather is not a cardinal sin if it is tethered to other ideas. A person may talk of bad weather and how they are having a hard time finding home insurance coverage and might need to sell their property. That could lead to a discussion of how the use of drones to make actuarial risk assessments have changed the home insurance game. The person maybe aware of insurtech companies that are most trending these days - and I may have not heard of some of them. To me that is an absolutely worthwhile conversation with a stranger who decided to break ice by talking about weather. Is this person lacking emotional intelligence ? No to me. 

They have connected the dots between a few different topics and educated me along the way. Not sure why that would be considered un-intelligent. There is a lot to be said for meeting a person where they are in the flow of the conversation - the Carnegie anecdote about meeting a botanist at a party is a great illustration of the concept. Carnegie included himself in the conversation that was already happening on a the topic the speaker was on. Not many are able to do that in a way that does not disrupt something about the dynamic - being able to do that gracefully and without missing a beat is definitely emotionally intelligent. 

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