ARTICLES

The Ups and Downs of Small Talk
Image specialist recommends initiating elevator chat with strangers.

BY KEVIN McGRAW
TORONTO STAR

So here I am, trying to figure out how to meet people, overcome some shyness, start some small talk, get networking. What will I say?

"My name is Kevin and I'll be hosting your elevator." No, too flippant.

"Welcome to the elevator."

Uh-uh. They'll look at me oddly, maybe let the doors close and run away.

I know: "How's your day going?". Normal question. Said it a million times. Heard it just as much. And so what if they look at me oddly just because I try to start a conversation on that quietest of inventions—the elevator.

"If you can talk to a stranger on the elevator, you can talk to anybody," says Roz Usheroff, whose job it is to help people get noticed.

She advocates acting as the host wherever you are: hotel check-ins, grocery store check-outs. Unlike guests, who have expectations of what people should do for them, hosts are more interested in making others feel good, welcome. And good hosts are remembered.

"I love elevators because it's a limited time," Usheroff says. "Because it's a limited timeframe, you don't have to be stuck with the person for hours, but your comfort level in breaking down walls within seconds will allow someone to see you as more confident. Either that or you're off the wall. For the most part, people always admire people who have the gift of the gab, who talk to anybody about anything."

It's Usheroff, a Toronto communications and image specialist, who has inspired me to go riding elevators for an afternoon in the downtown core. My first stop, my first victim, was in First Canadian Place. He was about 5-7, slim, and looked furtive holding some files close to his chest. "How's your day going?" said I, trying to act like a host.

"Great," he responded. And it was a hearty"great." I was relieved.

"Really?" I said.

"Every day is a good day," he said and walked away smiling as his door opened.

A couple of floors. A couple of minutes. A couple of sentences. It was nothing, really. And it was everything.

"You ever notice when people get on an elevator, they sometimes seem to be holding their breath?" wonders Jeff Ansell, a Toronto communications counsellor. "And so once I realized that I, too, was holding my breath on elevators, I think that's when I started to breathe,. Number 1, and look at the other people, and now and again say ,"Hi, how's it going?".

So I'm not alone in this talking-to-strangers-in-elevators thing. My second victim, still in First Canadian Place: a bit taller than the first, looks real wound up. I hesitate, but ask: "How goes your day?"

"Ugh," he says. His eyes seem to burn. I'm worried. Then he starts a little rant, not at me, but at everybody else. "If I could just focus on the one thing, the important thing," he starts.
His day, it turns out, is going very badly. Too many people pulling him in too many directions. He needed to tell someone. He told me.

It's the fine line between getting the job and not getting the job.
"You're giving them an outlet, you're giving them a valve and you're bringing a personal communication to a very impersonal-type situation," says Ansell. "Here you are with a half-dozen people, sharing a very limited space, breathing the same air and everybody deliberately avoiding everybody else. That's pretty awkward."
I didn't start out doing this for other people. I did this for me, to overcome some shyness, learn small talk. But far from giving me strange looks, these strangers seemed to welcome talking on the elevator.

"It's interesting, because if you hadn't initiated, then you wouldn't have known," says Oakville's Cindy Dachuk, who teaches leadership training and personal coaching. "I usually embarrass the heck out of my husband and business associates when I'm in elevators with them and anywhere else because I do things like that (chat) naturally. If I'm standing in line in a checkout, I'm chatting with somebody. I have a really short life here and if I'm going to be standing in line, I'm going to be enjoying it." So now I was starting to enjoy it. So many people had so much to say in that little time.

"Having a good day?" "Not really." I look inquisitive. She answers: "Hey, honesty is the best policy." She leaves with a smile on her face. It wasn't there when she got on.
"Having a good day?" "Haven't decided yet." "Things will turn for the better," I say. "Oh yeah, at 5 o'clock," she says, and laughs.

It's an exercise in small talk that is the essence of being noticed at parties. It's self-marketing, so that you'll be sought out for your expertise. It's the fine line between getting the job and not getting the job.
"We know politicians work on their image," says Usheroff, who adds that everyone should do the same.
"How I come across to you will determine how you will treat me."

A lot of people resist small talk, feeling it to be phony. Usheroff thinks otherwise.
"Every relationship you have in your life, except the one with your parents, began with small talk," she says. "So what I say is you're treating it as superficial because you're not seeing that maybe other people are interesting. You're forming judgments on other people be determining whether you want to talk to them or not."

So don't be afraid to say hello and talk about the weather to a stranger on an elevator. Ignore him or her, actually, at your own peril.

"I had a person come for a job interview before, who got on to an elevator and didn't respond to anybody in the elevator," says Dachuk. "He was quite withdrawn, very centred on himself, didn't engage anybody. But he was going for a very public-focus position, almost like a meeter-greeter kind of role. And the gentleman who was trying to engage him in a conversation in the elevator was the person whom the individual was interviewing with.

"Did not get the job, just because he was not open to responding in that kind of an environment. Could not answer hello without looking furtively down at his feet."