How To Win People and Influence No One
Back in the MySpace days, before "Live, Laugh, Love" posters were a symbol for being insufferable, and the phrase "Real eyes realize real lies" was considered clever, there was a common thought exercise (I guess we can call it that) that was repeated pretty often. It was a hypothetical with the purpose of making you consider the value of your friendship(s).
Would you rather have 1 best friend, or 100 acquaintances?
I feel as if I heard this often as a kid, and would dwell on it often, too. There is, of course, no right answer here. In fact, I would say both answers are wrong. But...I think that the goal of this question, at least when asked by most people, was to get you to consider the importance of having a best friend. Of course having a single best friend, someone that you can share everything with, someone you never tire of, would be better than having any number of fleeting friends, right? Putting all of your social eggs in a single basket seems like a poor idea though.
We all need a best friend. We need someone that understands us, that we understand, and that makes us feel like we fit in with no one but them. Any friendship, though, takes work. Some people – introverts, ambiverts, what-have-you-verts – may need more socialization than they have a 'social battery' for. Unfortunate.
Enter: Small talk. The worst kind of talk. The feeling of dread you get when you're in an elevator alone, and suddenly it stops at another floor before yours. The doors crawl open and a stranger appears from behind a silver Powerpoint transition. What are they going to say to you? Will you have to pretend to agree with their politics? Will you make an uncomfortable comment that you'll have to live with? Will you respond with "Oh nothing!" when they ask "How are you?" Will someone else show up that they can talk to instead?! (Spoiler: no.)
A friend of mine recently came to me and told me that she was living for small talk lately. She has two kids, both just starting to hit school age and full up on extra curricular activities. Between cooking dinner, driving the kids around, watching recitals, etc., her adult-level social needs were not being met. She didn't have the energy (or the time!) to make plans with friends, so she was fulfilling this need by making small talk with other parents during events. Imagine that; being fulfilled by small talk!
I'm happy for her that this worked, but to me it sounds like torture. Conversation for the sake of conversation? Talking about the weather because it's a safe topic? Single-serving friends? Seemed like a waste of energy to me. I know I'm not alone in this either.
Enter: the 100 acquaintances.
I'm generally not a person that goes out much, that makes a lot of plans, that enjoys talking to people. At some point in my 20s I became an adult, and I've been a boring tax-paying-citizen ever since. I don't like having others in my home, and I don't like invading the homes of others. I'm not a fan of going out to work events, and I absolutely dread the idea of a work offsite. And yet I've had conversations at work with people I'd never call to hang out, and almost felt myself craving more.
Here's the secret: holding conversation with them was easy.
I work for a tech startup (surprise!). With the exception of a few teams of accountants and HR people, it's pretty safe to assume that every circle of acquaintances I enter has at least one interest in common.
That assumed common interest creates a solid foundation for any conversation. There's always some sort of fallback. For us it's:
- Did you see the Intel vulnerability that was just released?
- So like...are there gonna be layoffs?
- Did you see that ridiculous Slack message? They deleted it but I screenshotted it.
Any lull in our conversation, any awkward silence, could quickly be filled in by technology talk, work talk, or whatever. That knowledge made it easier to stay in that conversation, knowing that there was less likely to be any awkward silences, or just complete boring talk. There will always be an Intel fuck-up to talk about.
There is another point that made it easy to keep talking too: we all have an easy out. When you're at work, you can always interrupt any thought to say "I really have to get back to this thing." It's not rude. It's not unreasonable. We're all here for a single reason: to serve our corporate overlords. We only give them 40 hours of our week (if you're not at a tech startup, of course), so it's only fair that we cut all conversation to a minimum. The moment you feel overwhelmed, or just had enough of your coworkers, just pretend to read an email or a Slack message and say "Oh shoot, I really have to jump on this call, sorry!" and get the hell out of there.
Despite my constant need to flee, and my keenly honed ability to perform the "Irish Goodbye", I very much enjoy my conversations with my 100 acquaintances. I can tell them the same story over and over again, and they'll just laugh politely because it's not worth reminding me that they've heard it already. They can promise me they'll bring in that cookie recipe on Monday and then never mention it again because they're actually on vacation all of next week. I won't be mad, I didn't want the recipe anyway. And we can all roll our eyes when Intel discloses another vulnerability with a 50% hyper-threading performance degradation. That's life, right?!
These conversations have been so much more engaging than discussing the weather just because I'm in the same room as someone. So much less anxiety-inducing than being stuck in a tiny, vertically moving box with a stranger. So much more fulfilling than play-it-safe politics with single-serving friends.
Talk to your best friend. Talk to them as much as you can. Love them. Tell them everything. But when you don't have time to get roped in to something real, or you're just tired of their inability to put everything into one damn text message, go talk to some coworkers. Tell them the same story you told them last week. Then lie about a presentation that has to be completed in the next 45 minutes, and go stare blankly at your desk to recharge.