How to master the art of schmoozing

This is an audio transcript of the Working It podcast episode: ‘How to master the art of schmoozing’

[AUDIO CLIP OF TENNIS MATCH]

Matt Abrahams
Many of us see these types of small talk, chit-chat conversations almost like a tennis match where things go back and forth. It’s like somebody served something to me and I have to return it and return it well.

Isabel Berwick
Hello and welcome to Working It from the Financial Times with me, Isabel Berwick. In this episode, we’re talking about that essential tool for networking and career advancement, the art of good conversation. Why are some people so good at schmoozing? Is it about knowing what questions to ask? Or is it more a question of adopting the right mindset?

[AUDIO CLIP OF TENNIS MATCH]

Matt Abrahams
Your job is simply to keep things moving. It’s not to say the right thing. And as in tennis land, that one ball that’s gonna win the game for me. It’s really about just keeping things going.

[AUDIO CLIP OF TENNIS MATCH AND CROWD CHEERING]

Isabel Berwick
That’s Matt Abrahams. He’s a communications lecturer at Stanford University in the US. He’s also the host of the popular podcast, Think Fast, Talk Smart. And he’s written a book, Think Faster, Talk Smarter: How to Speak Successfully When You’re Put on the Spot, which will be published this September by Simon and Schuster. We’ll be hearing some more nuggets of eloquence from Matt throughout today’s program, but he won’t be dominating the conversation. Here in the studio I’ve also got two other seasoned socialisers, both colleagues of mine at the FT. Pilita Clark’s an award-winning columnist who covers corporate life and climate change so she’s an expert on hot air (Pilita laughs). Welcome, Pilita.

Pilita Clark
I see exactly what you did there, Isabel. It’s great to be here.

Isabel Berwick
And Stephen Bush writes our daily Inside Politics newsletter and is a regular on the Political Fix podcast. His job must involve some fascinating conversations, but only when they’re strictly off the record.

Stephen Bush
Hello. Thanks so much for having me.

Isabel Berwick
Well, Matt said your priority in conversation is to keep things moving. So let’s get started. Or rather, before we even begin, let’s hear some more advice from Matt about how a good conversationalist, like a good scout, always comes prepared.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Matt Abrahams
I think doing a little bit of stockpiling in advance, thinking about some topics that would be relevant to the people in the room. A lot of us, especially when we’re nervous or anxious, get very self-focused and being audience-focused, other-focused can help. So I might go into a room thinking about a few things to talk about.

Isabel Berwick
Stephen, you’ve recently written a piece in the FT about how to make small talk at a diplomatic function. I guess diplomats are one class of people who always think before they speak, or can they be more loose-lipped than that?

Stephen Bush
Well, sometimes they are more loose-lipped but not if they are good at the job, right? The KPI of a good diplomat really is to make people feel warm and liked and not to create difficulties for their home country. I mean, in some ways, actually, I think what a diplomat has to do at a social function is similar to what a political journalist has to do in their beat. Unlike many other bits of journalism, I’m kind of stuck with the same group of contacts every week. You want them to continue to talk to you and you need to find out things that are useful for your home country or our newsletter, Inside Politics, without, you know, having to be spirited out of the country at the dead of night because you’ve said something like, actually, you know, Taiwan is an independent country or something similarly gnarly.

Isabel Berwick
So in most social situations, there are probably some questions that are a no-no. What are those for diplomats?

Stephen Bush
So, I would say the number one is actually don’t talk too much about politics in their home country, to topic in which they aren’t really allowed to express interesting things, in most cases. If they are a political appointee, it’s a little bit like going up to someone whose firm is going through a merger or an ownership change and going, so you must be worried about your job. I remember in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, someone clearly thinking that they were having an interesting chat about the prospects of Donald Trump winning. And the diplomat in question, you could tell, was just thinking, well, I’m not having a good time. I’m deeply worried about my country. I’m deeply worried about what this means for this posting. So yeah, that’s definitely one thing to avoid. And instead talk about, you know, the affairs of the country they’re in or cultural things they would recommend. You know, things where they can actually really talk like a human being.

Isabel Berwick
In the comfort zone.

Stephen Bush
Yeah.

Isabel Berwick
And Pilita, you wrote a wildly popular column a couple of months ago about elite schmoozers and their secrets. What are the secrets of the elite schmoozers when they come to prepare for small talk?

Pilita Clark
Yeah, so actually I was quite surprised to hear that preparation was such a key thing because I thought they were just all naturally gifted schmoozers. But it turned out that all of these people that I spoke to did exactly what Matt Abrahams is suggesting: they prepared. And so the sorts of things that they did, it sounds kind of calculating because to be honest it is. But, you know, they would think about who was going to be at the function, who they wanted to see, what they might be able to talk about. For example, if it was a diplomatic function, they would probably follow exactly the advice that Stephen very astutely gave in his column. And they would be just trying to figure out ways that they could draw people out for their own benefit rather than just sort of bowling in and thinking, oh, who are all these people? Who do I need to talk to? Who do I need to avoid? They’d really mapped it out in their brains beforehand.

Isabel Berwick
Why have none of us thought of this before now? Because this is revelatory to me.

Pilita Clark
I think that’s because, Isabel, we’re normal people (laughing) and it never occurs to us. No, I mean, is that quite right, though? I mean, if you’re heading off to the FT summer party or, you know, a work Christmas party where you know a lot of people, you probably don’t think about it. But let’s say you’re going to Buckingham Palace or something. You’d might be thinking about, OK, I might be seeing the King, but then I might be seeing all of these other people, and maybe I better just figure out how not to make a fool of myself by saying the wrong thing, maybe. You know, I think sometimes we do these things a little bit unconsciously. But I think the real pros spend a lot of time thinking about it.

Isabel Berwick
Yeah, that would have stopped me that time when I sat next to a dude at dinner and said, what brings you here? And he said, I’m the CEO of the company (Pilita laughs) hosting this. And it was like, that went down well. Matt Abrahams has some more advice on what questions to ask and what he calls conversation structures.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Matt Abrahams
It’s three simple questions: what, so what, and now what? And with this structure, you can do a lot in small talk. So, for example, if I have to initiate, I might go up to you and say, what brings you here? And you could give me an answer, and then I’d ask, you know, so what? Why is that important? Or what value are you finding here? And then after you answer that question, I can say, oh, and what’s next? What are you hoping to do? So just by leveraging what, so what, now what, I have a mechanism to initiate and continue conversation.

Isabel Berwick
Stephen, do you have any clever strategies (Isabel laughs) when you’re shaping a conversation? I think that sounds contrived, but it could be really clever.

Stephen Bush
I think it can be if you have the right personality type. I think I would sound sarcastic if I did that. I mean, so mostly when I’m at an event, I model myself after a CEO I once sat next to who did not talk once about themselves and they just asked the other loads of why, why and just bathed the other person in attention. And this person was so indiscreet because they just felt so loved. And so my approach is always just to ask people a lot of questions about themselves, but very effusive. How interesting, I don’t know very much about x, tends to be my go-to.

Isabel Berwick
You’re like the opposite of a bad date, Stephen. Pilita, what are your strategies for conversation-shaping?

Pilita Clark
Well, you know, I’m afraid I don’t really have any but I think actually that’s not quite true because as a journalist you are trained to ask people questions and almost as importantly, listen to what they say and then keep asking and asking and asking in the hope that they’ll say something not just interesting but potentially newsworthy. So in a way, we naturally, all of us, I think, a bit more prepared perhaps than others are to do what naturally extends a conversation. So I don’t worry at all if I’m in a room full of people who are all madly talking about themselves. I’m quite happy because I’m just there, soaking things up and satisfying my curiosity a lot of the time.

Isabel Berwick
See, you’re great. I have met plenty of journalists who don’t listen, but I think that’s probably another episode. So another vexed issue in social gatherings is whose turn it is to speak and how you steer the conversation. Here’s Matt again.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Matt Abrahams
There are researchers, not me, who have studied how turns get taken, and there are two really different types of turns that can be taken. They’re those that are supporting and those that are shifting. So imagine you share with me that you’ve returned from your holiday in Suffolk. A shifting response would be like, oh, I just got back from my trip to the Galápagos. I shifted the topic. It’s still travel, but I took it away from your trip to be about my trip. That’s a shifting turn. A supporting turn is one where I say, Oh, tell me about Suffolk, how was the weather? What did you enjoy? So that’s a supporting comment. And what research suggests is if you want to keep conversation going, that your percentage of supporting responses should be higher than your percentage of shifting responses. It’s not you want one over the other, but you wanna balance them out and make sure that you’re doing slightly more supporting responses.

Isabel Berwick
So Pilita, this reminds me of this distinction you made in your column between radiators and drains. Can you explain that to us? Because I think that was a brilliant way of explaining, I think, what Matt’s talking about.

Pilita Clark
Yeah, I mean, it’s not an original observation. And so, radiators are people who literally kind of radiate energy and people want to be around them because they exude interest in whoever it is they’re talking. Drains, on the other hand, are people who get Matt’s ratio all wrong and just continually draw the conversation back to themselves. And you could say absolutely anything and they would say, that’s fascinating, you’ve been to Suffolk. So I just have to and I discovered this extraordinary thing and just off you go down a terrible rabbit hole.

Isabel Berwick
I’m gonna have my head full of all this stuff now. But Stephen, there are occasions when it’s OK to talk about ourselves, surely. I mean, someone like you, you must go to events and people want to talk to you. You’re pretty well known in your area.

Stephen Bush
I think the drains and radiators and indeed the shifting, supporting is a really useful way of thinking about it. I think there are two times when it’s appropriate to talk about yourself. The first is, if someone asks you a question because they are excited to meet you. And actually, I think the social cue I’m most likely to fail is when someone says, I really like your stuff. I for some reason still will do a thing where I go, OK, or thank you or . . . you know. So some kind of response and the urge to just say, and imagine how much more you enjoyed my stuff before (Isabel laughs) you can put a face to the name. But the other more mercenary time I think, is that sometimes, if you don’t talk about yourself at all, it makes it seem like you’re either listening in sort of quite a vampire-like way or you’re not really listening. If someone says something about themselves which is actually indiscreet or interesting, this is always something I try and do in an interview is I always feel that people are more likely to open up if every time the subject is kind of moves two spaces towards you, you kind of move one space towards them in your next question so you go, ah, yes, it’s interesting what you’ve just said about how much you hated being an MP at first. I hated it when I started a job, you know. And I think that that’s when it’s particularly useful because it causes people to feel that they’re, you know, loved and listened to.

Isabel Berwick
Yeah, it builds empathy. So I wanted to come on to that painful topic of small talk. So we’ve had some very good tips on how to hold a conversation. But the bigger question for a lot of people who’ll be listening to this is that they absolutely hate small talk, you know, particularly when it comes to professional networking. I know people who will avoid events. You know, I’ve spent probably hours of my life in toilets before dinners so that I don’t have to network. Not anymore, but in my twenties and thirties, I was really terrified. So this really appeals to me. And Matt Abrahams has a theory about that too.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Matt Abrahams
At a more evolutionary level, one of the reasons we get very nervous speaking in front of others is our status is at risk and not like status today, who drives the fancy car, who has the most social media following? You know, when our species was evolving, we would hang out in bands of up to 150 people. And your relative status among those people was incredibly important. Things like access to food, access to resources, access to reproduction, and that’s part of who we are as humans. So when you walk into a room where you don’t know people, you don’t know the consequences, that evolutionary challenge presents itself.

Isabel Berwick
I haven’t heard that argument before, have you, Pilita? I find it quite persuasive.

Pilita Clark
I haven’t heard it either, but I do find it persuasive. And the only thing I would say to people listening who are worrying about this is that these elite schmoozes, these master members that I spoke to, I would say that they are pretty much gifted in some ways that a lot of us are not. You know, they’re outgoing, they’re very well-read, they’re active. On the other hand, all of them said that they actually get a bit nervous themselves and they have strategies to deal with that nervousness. For example, one of them said that he trained himself to realise that it was OK to stand by yourself with a drink, particularly if you were at an art gallery or a museum or something. You could just stand and look thoughtful until you spotted another lone person and then you could make a quiet beeline over to them (laughs). So they all said they worry about things like forgetting someone’s name having just been introduced. They worry about saying the wrong thing. They worry about faux pas. So they worry about all sorts of things that we all think about. It’s just that they, I think, they’re probably better at recovery than a lot of us are.

Isabel Berwick
That’s incredibly reassuring. And Stephen, I’m interested to know, do you think that you have to enjoy schmoozing to do your job or to be a diplomat or a politician? These jobs that rely on sort of networks of information.

Stephen Bush
I don’t think you have to enjoy in order to succeed, except at the very, very top level in politics, in diplomacy. I think in journalism, it’s OK for it not to be the thing you get your energy from because there are other parts of the job. The thing I would say I really notice observing politicians over quite a long period of time is that particularly because so much of advancing is both getting the voters to respond well to you but also getting your party to like you. If you don’t enjoy the going out and meeting people, you burn out, you don’t enjoy it, you don’t do it very well. And I do think that is what kind of separates let’s take, you know, the slightly historical example now, but that is what separated David Miliband, who did not become Labour leader in 2010, from Ed Miliband, who did. And history is littered with politicians who were not good schmoozers, who therefore did not ascend right to the very top.

Isabel Berwick
So one lesson here might be to be nice to people above you and below you when schmoozing or networking.

Stephen Bush
Well, I think it goes back to Matt’s last point about why it’s stressful but actually, ultimately they are 360-degree events. Obviously, one ought to be nice to the waitstaff because, you know, they’re human beings too. But people do notice, oh, so-and-so was very rude with the person about the canapés, weren’t they. Oh, so-and-so was very sharp on the phone to their junior staffer or and I do think in some ways you have things that are about being treating it like dating is actually a good way of thinking about it, because I think most people, if they are honest, don’t particularly enjoy their first date. But you prepare for it, you try and put your best foot forward and that’s generally a good approach to it, right?

Isabel Berwick
That’s a great tip, Stephen. So we’re almost at the end of the program, but I want to leave almost the last word to Matt Abrahams about how to exit a conversation gracefully. This is something that I have totally failed to do in my entire networking life.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Matt Abrahams
My favourite exiting strategy comes from a friend and colleague. Her name is Rachel Greenwald and she calls this the white flag approach. White flag in terms of car racing, they will wave a white flag before the last lap. When you wanna exit a conversation, you signal that you’re going to exit. You can say, oh, you know, I really want to go talk to the people over there, but before I leave, and then you ask one question. So it’s that final lap. Many of us feel exiting these conversations are awkward and we usually rely on biological functions to get us out. I have to use the restroom. I’m hungry. I’m gonna go get a drink. Instead, just signal. Hey, there’s some others over there I’d like to chat with. But I’ve really enjoyed our conversation about travel and I’m curious about your upcoming trip to Suffolk. So I signal I’m leaving, but I engage the conversation a little bit more and then when it’s done, I exit.

Isabel Berwick
So Pilita, (laughter) you wrote about exiting from your master minglers. How would you personally exit a conversation and what did they teach you?

Pilita Clark
Well, they taught me a lot, actually (laughs). Because I have to admit that my favourite strategy is, oh, do excuse me, I just have to pop to the bathroom, followed by, I’m just gonna get a drink, would you like to come? And I discovered that a lot of people think that that’s fine. The second one, not the first, but a lot of the master minglers are not in favour of that at all. But they say it’s fine to go to the bar because that, in the words of one, breaks the seal that you otherwise have and another way of breaking the seal — extrication, in other words — is you spot someone passing by and you alight upon them as if they were a passing rescue ship in the night and you have just got a lifebuoy (laughs). Do you know what I mean? You say, hi, I just want . . . would you like to meet my friend Isabel? And that breaks the seal as well. You know, you have to be quite careful with that, because I unwittingly tried that myself at the last FT summer party where I’d had a good 30-odd minutes with a chap who was deeply, deeply interested in carbon sequestration. And I thought, you know what? Is there probably someone you’d like to meet here? And he said, yes! Yes, the editor, who just happened to be passing by. And I said, Roula! (laughing) introduced her, and did not actually get thanked for it later. I have to be honest about it. So (laughs) just be careful is my word there on extrication.

Isabel Berwick
Well, those are excellent tips. You know, I think I’ve used the bathroom one too many or just that kind of, you know, slinking off silently is pretty terrible, too.

Pilita Clark
Yeah, exactly. I mean, I really like this white flag business because actually one person I spoke to said at a work function, it’s actually OK to say, you know what, it’s just been great talking to you, but I have to go soon. There’s just another person I wanted to see on the way out. And that’s the way you kind of do it. And you’re just quite open and honest about the fact that, look, it’s not a social function. You are here for work. So that’s what I’m gonna try in future.

Isabel Berwick
Yeah, no, I’ve never heard of it. I went to a big networking event yesterday and I met London’s probably top networker, and that is exactly the strategy she used on me. So it’s spot on. Stephen, how does the average British MP extricate themself — you must have been in plenty of those conversations.

Stephen Bush
Yeah. So I think the average British MP, slightly unhelpfully for our purposes, gets a minion to do it for them (Isabel laughs). Right? So dreadfully sorry, but so-and-so has to be somewhere else and then they’re taken to another circle to hold court. But the other thing I’ve observed MPs doing is a kind of ping pong from one pair to another. So they go, Oh, I just need to go and bend so and so’s ear. They then go and have a conversation with this other parliamentary colleague and then they find another circle. The advantage of doing that, one of them told me recently, is having someone who is an actual friend who you can have a two-minute conversation allows you to get back in the zone of work chat. So then you have a two-minute conversation. Often they said on the lines of, God, this party is ghastly. I can’t wait for it to be over. And then they go back into the schmooze.

Isabel Berwick
Stephen and Pilita, thank you. You’ve been brilliant. Have you got one final tip for our listeners before we go?

Pilita Clark
I think practice is the way to go, so just gird yourself and get out there.

Isabel Berwick
Stephen?

Stephen Bush
Yes, see it as work, essentially. And that way you will enjoy it as the thing it is rather than feeling like you’ve got to actually have fun while doing it.

Isabel Berwick
Thank you. I think I’m gonna be setting off with more confidence and spring in my step and not locking myself in the ladies for half an hour at the next networking event.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

This has been great. So I’ve really started to think about networking in a different way. Particularly that thing about it’s work, not fun. Which might stop me from having that third glass of white wine. And the most important takeaway is to prepare. My God, why haven’t I thought of this before? If I meet you at party from now on, I will have Googled you beforehand. The having those conversational strategies, thinking of common points of interest. That’s kind of, we might say, a bit calculating. But does it matter? Because actually what you’re looking for is a bit of connection, to be genuinely interested in other people. And I think that’s something we can all take away from this.

With thanks to Matt Abrahams, Stephen Bush and Pilita Clark for this episode. If you’re enjoying the podcast, we’d really appreciate it if you left us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. And please do get in touch with us. I’m isabel.berwick@ft.com, or you can find me on LinkedIn. If you’re an FT subscriber, please sign up for the Working It newsletter. I bring you the best workplace and management stories from across the FT and our new office therapy advice column. Sign up at FT.com/newsletters. This episode of Working It was produced by Laurence Knight and Audrey Tinline. The executive producer is Manuela Saragosa with mix from Simon Panayi. Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s global head of audio. Thanks for listening.