Small Talk

3
Take the Plunge:
Start a Conversation!
You are armed with a pocketful of icebreakers. You
know that if someone greets you, you’ve got some
great material for a conversation. Just having topics in
mind to talk about goes a long way toward improving
your skills. However, there are still a few gaps that can
give you needless heart palpitations. Right now you only
feel prepared to respond when someone else engages you
in conversation. So you walk into your son’s school and
wait for another parent to say hello. You go to an industry
dinner and try to act busy while you hope for a colleague
to come along and talk. No. No. No. It does not
need to be so stressful.
Matt McGraw, an information services manager in
Denver, described how a situation was made less stressful