Why Do We Talk About The Weather So Much?
I’ve been in business school for over 1.5 years now, and if I had to name ONE skill that I’ve mastered, it would be small talk.
One cannot emphasize enough the volume of small talk you will be expected to engage in at business school. Right from the start, you will have networking events and meet-and-greets where you will memorize and sharpen your personal introduction. Following this, you will enter more formal environments with professors and recruiting companies, where small talk topics vary slightly, but the nature remains the same.
Over these years of business school you will become adept at knowing how to approach someone different from you or perhaps someone you’ve never spoken to before. Maybe you’ve heard about the business they started or the club they’re running. Maybe you know their best friend. Maybe you just want to pet their dog. But that initial hesitation of not knowing where to begin slowly fades away.
This level of comfort is owed to relatability. When two people have something, anything, in common, they can create worlds and peaks out of that one mutual subject. For example, you both studied physics in college. You will first begin talking about your personal take on the subject, whether you thoroughly enjoyed it or hated it to the absolute core. You will then discuss your professors and the people in the classroom you interacted with. You will perhaps continue to discuss something interesting you came across in that field of study, maybe a research paper, maybe a cool physicist. But across this engagement that I just described, you have now spent 10 minutes fully paying attention to this one individual, and them, you.
This, my friends, is how connections are built.
Small talk has a unique power of creating a common jumping pad off which your connection can either grow or dip. After this brief physics conversation, one of you (probably the more pro-active/eager one) will find the other on social media and send a request. Unless the other has an inflated ego or ‘doesn’t believe in social media’, they will accept and from thereon, you will be in the know of what is going on in each other’s life.
Now don’t get me wrong. Small talk can be painful. It can be aggravating and slimy and feel inauthentic. This is definitely the other end of the spectrum.
In such scenarios, I encourage you NOT to abort mission. I encourage you to stay on with the person metaphorically across the table from you and listen to what they have to say. Sometimes, they will speak more and you less. Sometimes you will have to do all the talking, and they will respond with one-word answers. Yet, stay on.
Because know that there may not always be an equally as excitable point of relatability between both of you. You could have grown up in different countries, worked in completely different fields, and not drink the same beer. That is ok.
Relatability is hard to find if you are consciously putting yourself in an unfamiliar environment, like business school. This brings me to my awfully click-baity heading — the weather is what creates relatability, and it never lets us down.
‘Gloomy weather today, eh?’ ‘Wow, this weather is incredible; it reminds me of home!’ ‘I cannot believe how moody this weather is being, I have no idea how to dress.’
More often than not, one will ALWAYS have a response to the three statements above. Even something brief and straightforward, but something.
And so that, my friends, is why we talk about the weather so much. Not because we’re filling awkward space and time and trying to appear more interested than we are. Not because we actually care about the weather. Because we are trying to build a connection. And if we have nowhere to begin, why not begin with the weather?
I wrote a post on LinkedIn about relatability. If you find it relatable (see what I did there?!), give it some love. And of course, feel free to send me a connection request!
