Our Blog Posts will help you reach your full potential in becoming a confident conversationalist. New topics each week.
Following results of every single game can be time consuming⌠and depending on the team you follow â tedious.
If youâre not the type of person who enjoys tracking daily or weekly results, you might appreciate lifetime achievements. Heck, who couldnât appreciate career accomplishments that reflect a lifetime of hard work?
This is another example of how sports conversations can springboard to other business topics. You can use popular sports topic to start a conversation and then transition to something else, like the accomplishment youâre most proud of in Q3. (And if you think you shouldnât, canât or wonât talk about your personal accomplishments⌠keep an eye out for a blog on that this week.)
There are a couple career accomplishments in this weekâs list of conversation starters plus a few other topics to talk about this week.
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Busy, hectic, full... if all of these words could be used to describe your schedule these days, I get it.
I also understand that its easy to skip the small talk and just get down to work. Some days it's the best way to stay on track, but it's also worth remembering that you can have a complete conversation in less than a minute.
These sports conversation starters can help with short exchanges this week.Â
The NFL regular season is underway and if you need a default conversation topic from now until the Super Bowl on February 12, football is a safe bet. Just consider the TV ratings from last season. NFL games accounted for 75 of the top 100 most watched TV programs in 2021 and the Top 5 most-watched programs were NFL games.
Millions of fans tune in for weekly games. They might not like every outcome, but they generally enjoy talking (or venting) about what happened.
The popularity of the NFL and football in general is why itâs most-often at the top of our weekly Conversation Starters list. You donât have to go far to find a good talking point but thereâs plenty of other options this week too.
A few weeks ago I suggested using NFL training camps to start conversations so you could circle back around with those football fans at the beginning of the regular season. This week marks the beginning of the NFL regular season. Now is great opportunity to circle back around and ask questions like these.
Thereâs more than just football to talk about, take a look at these topics making news this week.
Are you bored by your colleaguesâ small talk every Monday?
Tired of hearing what they did over the weekend?
Not interested in seeing another video of a kidâs baseball tournament?
If you donât like the topics they bring to the table, beat âem to the punch with a conversation starter of your own. If you donât want to think too hard about it, use one of these sports topics to get the ball rolling and steer the conversation to where you want it to go.
College football starts this week, but what I hope you're starting this week is a new relationship as a result of small talk.Â
Purposeful small talk can help you do that. These sports conversation starters can get the ball rolling.Â
A quick search about small talk and effective small talk reveals lists of questions, articles on the ânecessary evilâ of it and hacks to make it easier.
What if you tried to personalize it instead of trying to avoid it? Instead of arming yourself with a list random questions or looking for an easy way out, what if you prepared for the conversation and walked away from the interaction having accomplished something?Â
If you consider small talk a necessary evil of course youâre going to try and avoid it. If itâs always awkward youâre not going to initiate it and if you think itâs a waste of time you wonât bother putting yourself in position to have the conversation in the first place.
Small talk can be all of those things. Often because itâs not the conversation we prepare for.
We prepare for the big moments and the ârealâ conversation. We think small talk is something we endure or blow off altogether. Â
Except it can also be the most pivotal moment in any conversation. Small talk...
Last week I told you about my goal to not respond with âBusyâ when someone asked, âHow are you?â Update: I mostly succeeded. But I also caught myself giving 1-word answers that werenât very helpful in sparking conversation. I was also guilty of delivering a half-hearted response and not being present enough in some of my interactions to ask the obvious follow up question or make a real connection.
So the goal will stay the same this week.
I talk for a living, but even I need to prepare for conversations and remember to stay in the moment. Every interaction, including small talk, is more gratifying when you do that. Here are a few sports conversation starters to help you prepare for those moments this week.
This week Iâm making it my goal to not say âBusyâ in response to a question like âHow are you?â or âHow are things?â
Itâs accurate to say that Iâm busy, but thatâs not an interesting answer. My life is always busy (especially when sports season overlap this month) and everyone is busy too.
Telling people weâre busy isnât a great conversation starter. I understand that sometimes we really are too busy to talk, but often I give that answer because I havenât taken the time to come up with a better one. (Because Iâm busy, of course.)
So hereâs what Iâm going to do: This week, Iâm going to try to answer the question âHow are you?â accurately and in a way that could prompt a conversation, or at the very least make for a more interesting exchange.
Hereâs what Iâve workshopped so far:
After that Iâll be using one of these sports conversation...
Saying hi is easy.
The sentence that comes next is the one that can trip you up. If itâs always âHow are you?â youâll probably find yourself following the exact same script for every single conversation and you might also notice youâre not getting very far in the conversation.
Avoid the conversation road block by have an actual question or conversation starter at the ready. These sports topics could work.
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