Hi, I'm Helen and I'm Sarah and this is the Squiggly Careers podcast, a weekly show where we talk about the ins outs, ups and downs of work to give you a bit of insight, support, advice and some tools to help you feel a little bit more confident and in control of your career. And as well as the episode, which Sarah will tell you what we're going to be talking about today in a moment, we also create lots of extra things to help you

with your development. So you can download our pod sheet, which is a one page summary of what

we're going to talk about today. And you can also get a swipable summary. All of those

resources are either on our LinkedIn page, which is Amazing If, so just head there, or on our website,

which is Amazingif.com. So interesting topic, which I think we're going to have a bit of fun with today,

how to make small talk. And in workshops, I often ask people a bit about networking, which we define

as people helping people. But before I

share that definition, I say, you know, how do you feel about networking? And often unprompted,

people will tell me about their hatred of small talk. And people are quite kind of visceral in

their reaction to just the kind of the dread, the anxiety.

And actually when it's, when you talk to people about kind of what is it about networking

that gets in your way, I feel like small talk is sort of almost like the biggest barrier.

Like that's the hurdle that people can't get past.

So they're like, well, I'm never going to network because I hate small talking.

I hate any kind of small talk.

I actually really like small talking.

I find it fun because my approach to it is I'm always thinking, oh, I never, I never

know who I'm going to meet or what we're going to talk about.

But I do, as somebody who kind of enjoys it and sort of just leaps into it, I suppose, I do sometimes

see the person I'm speaking to being far more resistant. Like, I definitely, sometimes, because I just

start a chat with anybody, at any event, anywhere. Big events, I feel a bit more awkward. That's

probably the only one where I'm like, take a deep breath before I do it, but almost in every other situation, like start of a Zoom, in a meeting room, that kind of thing, I'm fine with that

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