3 Tips to Starting a Conversation (and Defusing Awkwardness)

How we start a conversation is important because it sets the tone and gives everyone an inkling of what’s to come. It’s like reading the first page of a novel, taking the first bite of a meal, or throwing out the first pitch. 

Starting a conversation with friends or family is easy—they’re known entities and you have a shared history of experiences. But starting conversations with acquaintances, colleagues, or strangers can be more awkward than a Tyrannosaurus taking a selfie.

Conversations with people you don’t know well fall into two general camps. In the first, you want to initiate a conversation—you’re trying to network, have a question, or you simply see a heart-melting cutie across a crowded room.

In the second camp, you are forced into conversation so as not to be awkward or antisocial—you’re introduced to the friend of a friend, you’re waiting in line for the Keurig machine at work, or find yourself in the elevator with a neighbor whose name may or may not be Mulva.

If you live in a city, you know how strange public interactions can get—you sit thigh-to-thigh with a stranger on subway while ignoring each other’s existence, but despite being so physically close you can smell their deodorant (definitely Old Spice) there remains a wide gulf of social distance. 

Initiating conversation with true strangers is rare—in general, we all heed our parents’ rules about not talking to strangers. And while it’s a social norm, it’s not without exception. In researching this episode, I was fascinated by a paper I found in the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, which analyzed how conversations between strangers happen on public transportation. The paper found that although the unspoken rule is not to talk to strangers, we’re allowed to bend the rules if we follow certain conventions. 

First, you’re allowed to initiate conversation if your intentions are obvious. For example, say you’re at a train station. You stare up at the schedule board, look at your ticket, then the board again. You look puzzled, and then glance around. The result? The people around you, at least those who aren’t immersed in their phones, probably guess you have a question. This paves the way for you to initiate conversation.

According to the paper, you’ll probably do this in three ways: you’ll use what’s called a summons, like “excuse me,” an explanation, such as “The board says Track 3, but my ticket says...

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