I often find small talk pretentious and energy-draining.
Chatting with a friend of a friend or an acquaintance I meet once in three months about the weather or their dog seems like a useless exercise at the moment: no real connection, insight, or meaningful conversation.
Even worse is the quintessential conversation starter – ‘Hey, how are you?’
Not once has someone apart from a close family member poured their heart out or genuinely spoken about how they feel. Everyone is always good or great.
While such connections seem banal on the surface, they have a high potential to improve your knowledge, resources, and opportunities. They expand your social circle beyond the close trusted network to what are ‘weak ties.’
Interaction with weak ties is the low frequency with less bonding or emotional intensity. They are casual connections with acquaintances at work, people you bump into at the gym, or even virtual friends you follow on social media.
These people dwell outside of your close-knit social network. They are fishes of a different pond that only cross your path at a few moments in time.
But here’s the thing – you already know everything about your family and close friends. You seldom get exposed to new information or experiences when interacting with them. The conversations tend to be predictable, familiar, and deep, but not diverse.
Since weak ties are less connected to us, they bring ideas and opportunities we have not already encountered. We also don’t know the people they know, thus opening doors to more informal yet useful network expansion.
Novel information can greatly impact employment opportunities – we often get introduced to new companies or a referral by a ‘friend of a friend’ who decided to help! It is also common to discover future colleagues during casual interactions or events.
The theory that weak ties are particularly helpful in delivering new employment opportunities by introducing new labor market information was proven by a large empirical study involving 20 million people over five years!
People beyond your immediate network are just more likely to open up information clusters that would either be unknown to your immediate circle or take a long time to discover through active searching.
Moreover, weak ties carry new perspectives as fishes of a different pond.
For example, colleagues in a different department of your company might provide valuable snippets of information that enable us to view problems differently or gather information that improves decision-making.
Most times, we may not recognize the value of these connections and classify them as ‘weak ties.’ They are not our most trusted ties or those who comfort and understand us during difficult situations.
However, nurturing these connections can unearth the strength of weak ties in the long run. This is not a network of strangers – they are people with whom we have something in common but interact infrequently.
Building weak ties can be both in-person and virtual. Joining sports clubs, hiking groups, volunteering organizations, or even attending alumni events can provide access to people who form an extended network capable of providing novel information.
LinkedIn and Twitter are avenues to connect with folks in a similar industry or career path.
Extracting value from weak ties requires effort. This could be coming up with interesting small talk around the water cooler, asking questions that could start a conversation, or simply exchanging pleasantries.
Anything that would leave an impression and later create a memory.
So the next time, I may not have to pretend and instead remind myself of the potential ‘weak tie’ I might be forming and the underrated possibilities this might unlock. The energy might just be worth it.
After all, my business is about weak ties