Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep15: Does small talk stress you out?

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Corporate Survivor Podcast, where we talk about how to grow your career confidence, build your skills and value, increase your salary, and the many lessons we learn in the corporate world. For more career support, click on over to www.mayping.com. This is Mayping, your corporate leader turned career coach. I hope you enjoy, like and subscribe. In today's podcast, I want to talk about why deep conversations are cool. Hi, we are now at the midpoint of my 5-day, 5-part Introverts Unite series. So if you haven't caught the earlier ones, please follow my podcast.

Starting point is 00:00:47 So right now in the world today, there is a lot of emphasis on small talk. So if you are attending a bunch of trainings and courses, I'm sure you would have heard about why small talk is so important to launch your business and how it helps in your career. And in terms of developing a good and cordial relationship with people. So great. So I'm all about small talk. And I think the ability to have small talk is a very good skill to have in your communication arsenal.

Starting point is 00:01:23 So amazing. What I want to talk about today is the lack of appreciation of the beauty and the power of having deep conversations. So introverts are very good and they truly enjoy having deep one-on-one conversations. If you're an introvert, you operate a lot in your mind and generally you are pretty curious. So a deep conversation allows you to have the space to really speak with that person and coupled with your listening skills, which are normally pretty advanced, to really learn about a person and get that insight and satisfy your curiosity. So deep conversations, it's a pretty cool thing.

Starting point is 00:02:29 And I'll share a story with you so I was talking to one of my friend's sisters she's part of the generation z very young only 20 years old so she she was telling me that she there's something wrong with her because she just finds small talk very terrifying. She's afraid to even approach someone, to just say, hi, how are you? She finds it very awkward. That's one thing. But most of all, she finds it ridiculous. Ridiculous in the sense that she finds that she can't really connect with a person by asking one or two questions, how are you, and she finds it very superficial. And if you are a deep conversationalist, I'm sure at some point in your life, you might have felt the same way also.

Starting point is 00:03:20 So the challenge is this. Why do we need to have small talk? And why people think that having a long one-on-one conversation is not good? I guess there's no clear-cut answer, but in today's very busy, fast-paced world, I guess we all have very short attention spans. We don't really have the time or patience to listen to someone else. In fact, I think that there lies the beauty. You know, for someone to really allocate, I don't know, half an hour or one hour to really listen to you deeply, to really talk about the things that matter, I think that is a massive gift.

Starting point is 00:04:06 And if you have introvert friends who are always trying to catch you to chat for an hour or two, count that as a blessing and not an annoying thing. I understand that we are all busy, we all have things to do. But I think that over time, this is a part of human nature human connection human bonding that we will terribly miss which is really connecting with a person deeply way beyond just asking about the weather asking asking how are you. You know, right now when you ask how are

Starting point is 00:04:46 you, the question doesn't even have a significance anymore because automatically the other person is just going to say fine. So really spending time to build genuine and authentic relationships is important and having deep conversations is one of the ways to get there. So I also have a lot of introvert friends, I mean, sorry, extrovert friends. And some of the common things they tell me is that they struggle to create lasting and genuine relationships with people. So what I normally tell them is, it's because you're not genuinely focused on that person.

Starting point is 00:05:36 There's just so much going on and you're so highly stimulated that you can't even spend that much time to really try to get to know the other person. And even if you do, you might be so distracted by a lot of things, either in your head, in your environment, and the sounds, and the lights, and the whatever, that you're not really concentrating. So the time, those are not, I guess, quality time. And that's really the power that an introvert has. Unfortunately, it's not something that we all recognize because you don't read a soft skill article

Starting point is 00:06:15 that tells you that you need to have deep conversations with people. And this one I discovered on my own when I was moving up the corporate ladder i was take i took up portfolios that way were given to people way way older than me and i thought you know what i only have 24 hours in a day and i was already working you know 16 hours so i there was no more time so how can i build deep relationships with people and have deep conversations so that that one conversation one deep conversation that i had counts a really long way because i really paid attention i listened deeply to understand okay this is what

Starting point is 00:07:00 they do and these are the you know the other department's priorities and how do they work and what is the culture. So I got a lot of information and insights. And I think as an introvert, you kind of contemplate on that. It kind of sits in your mind. And when the time is right, you get to use it, which is extremely powerful. Because you can go around having five or six conversations, but you pick up nothing. So isn't that much, isn't that time wasted, right? So really ask yourself

Starting point is 00:07:34 when you are communicating with people, what kind of relationship do you want to build? Is it just sort of a high buy relationship or you want to build genuine deep relationships? So having a real deep conversation is the way to go and I know time is precious for everyone but here lies the opportunity because everyone is so busy. The person that you're talking to might not have felt heard for a long time. And I mean truly heard in terms of needs and motivations and what drives them. So that is really lacking. So for my fellow introverts out there, I want to tell you that deep conversations are cool.

Starting point is 00:08:23 Doesn't matter what other people tell you, but ask yourself, does it make you more fulfilled having a one-on-one with a person than you could really feel the connection, you guys learn so much about each other, and it was a fruitful conversation? As compared to a sort of a high-buy thing, but you got to speak to a lot of people, right? So quality over quantity.

Starting point is 00:08:51 There is no shame that you have only spoken to three people, but these are like really deep conversations, like you know a lot about the person after, like inside out. And don't compare it to other people who may have a very different communication style and a different preference from you. You're an introvert, play to your advantage. And I'm saying this specifically because I also have clients who come to me and say that Mei Ping, I'm an introvert, it's not working and I need to change myself. No, I don't believe in this concept. I believe that every personality trait has its own advantages. We just need to learn how to leverage them.

Starting point is 00:09:33 Of course, we need to avoid certain pitfalls depending on the role you're taking. Either you're in a corporate role or you're running a business and it all kind of plays out in different ways. But it's a very wrong mentality to tell yourself that some part of your personality is broken. There is something wrong. There is nothing wrong, right? We are all unique. So recognize that. Have the self-awareness to recognize that we are all unique.

Starting point is 00:10:00 Now, what is needed is that certain parts of your personality may not help you go a long way in your career or business. And that's something that we can adjust. And the adjustments are behavioral because these are little things that you can learn and practice to get better. Even for myself, right, I definitely enjoy like one-on-one conversations. But I know that the nature of my role where i was running multi-million dollar projects i couldn't have one two hours to speak with every single person because i was just working with too many people so then i learned little tips to still have deep conversations that doesn't take a lot of time right so like i said once you have this realization that okay

Starting point is 00:10:41 deep conversations it's totally okay right i don't have to compare my style to someone else and i just learn to make it work for me and we apply the right behavioral changes that you can practice then it becomes a skill that you can keep for all your life so that's all for today's deep conversations Cool. And I look forward to speaking with you in the remaining parts of this Introverts Unite podcast. Till then, see ya!

Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep15: Does small talk stress you out?

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