Social faux pas 4: Don't get too personal

I had a strange experience that I would like to share with you guys: so I was on a call with this company in Taipei and as you know, I have been dealing with the Taiwanese market for quite a while already so my boss got me involved in this deal given that the clients can then chat to me in Mandarin instead of English. I shall refer to this lady as Mrs Wu (not her real name) and she was appointed by her company to deal with us as she had lived in England, so if I ever feel the urge to switch to English, it wouldn't be a problem for her. So if you had been working from home for a while, you would be used to these Zoom meetings and I always make an effort to do a bit of casual social chat with the client, to make them feel like I'm not just all business, but a friendly, approachable person as well. Now normally I am quite good at making small talk but Mrs Wu did something pretty unusual: she asked a very personal question and I was slightly taken aback as I didn't think we were close enough to have that kind of conversation. The first question she asked me was, "do you have any children?" I said no, I don't - hoping that would be the end of it. She then asked me, "oh why not Alex? Is that because of your job? Are you working too hard to even think about starting a family?" I then simply said, "woah, that's quite a personal and a complex question Ms Wu, I don't think I can answer that now." Luckily she sensed that her question had been inappropriate and she then shifted focus to the safe topic of investing in Taiwan. Thus in today's post, I shall discuss about the delicate art of making small talk with people you work with, but are not necessarily your friends.  

Rule 1: Don't ask personal questions 

There is a simple reason why I didn't want to discuss my persona life with Mrs Wu, I didn't think that I knew her well enough to have that kind of conversation. She must have thought that I certainly look old enough to have children, but you simply don't ask someone you don't know very well personal questions like that. I could see how the conversation led to that question: I had commented that her English is actually stunningly good and she explained that she had lived in England for three years. I asked her if it was because she studied here and she said no, it was because my husband was doing his PhD and had the chance to spend some time at an English university, hence she took the opportunity to come to England with her husband to improve her English. So she knew London well and was asking me about which neighbourhood in London I lived in, she must have thought, "I didn't mind revealing to you that I'm a married woman, so I am going to assume that you're happy to talk about your family life with me." If she had sprung that personal question on me after we had known each other for a while, then sure I might have felt more comfortable talking about my personal life (given that Taiwan is Asia's most gay-friendly country) but we had only exchanged a few emails and this was in fact our first Zoom meeting. In fact, I have clients in Taiwan who know that I am gay and so it's not a question of me wanting to hide my sexuality from them. But instead, she asked a rather loaded question accusing me of getting my priorities wrong, assuming that I had not taken the time to have a family because I have a rather poor work-life balance - I didn't like that question, but didn't feel I knew her well enough to talk to her about this topic so I simply declined to answer the question. 

We don't like personal questions from people we don't know well is because we are naturally afraid of judgment. So let me share with you a true incident that happened just last week: I had an incident at work whereby I handled a client's compliant to the best of my ability and my director didn't like that way I handled it. He said that the client was somewhat unreasonable and I had to stand up to the client and say, "what happened was not our fault at all, you can't blame us." I made the judgment call that even if that was indeed the case, I still needed to win the client's confidence and earn his trust - that was why I wanted to be seen to have taken his compliant seriously out of respect for him (even if it was an unreasonable complaint). Whilst my director had a valid point, I still stand by the way I handled that difficult situation with no easy solution. I would feel comfortable telling someone like my sister about the situation because my sister knows me very well: she would know that I have very good social skills and has faith in my ability to resolve such situations. However, if I had shared that story with a complete stranger who knew nothing about my work history, then without that knowledge, the stranger may raise questions about the way I had handled that complaint and even question my social skills in this case. It's not that this stranger is being unfair to me of course, but s/he simply doesn't know enough about me to make an accurate evaluation about me in this situation. That's why we tend to  share personal matters only with friends and family members whom we're close to and feel comfortable with and that doesn't include Mrs Wu in this case. 

Rule 2: Keep it general and allow the other party some control.

So let's back track to the point in the conversation when Mrs Wu talked about the time she spent in England. If she wanted to make casual small talk, there were plenty of topics she could have chosen from - we have both had the experience of living in both Asia and England, that's one thing we do share in common and would be a good place for us to start a conversation. I remember the way I had to adjust to so many new aspects of a different culture when I first moved here in the 1990s and she would have gone through the same thing - from shops closing much earlier to the cold winters to not being able to find Chinese ingredients in our local supermarkets or even little things like being a whole eight time zones away from our friends and family back home. There is a lot we could have talked about whilst keeping it general enough to avoid being personal. Let me give you an analogy: you're meeting someone for the first time on a blind date. You meet for a coffee and you start getting to know each other, do you start with general questions like, "what is your favourite film? You may pick a few if you can't pick a favourite one." Or do you go for something intensely personal like, "what kind of relationship did you have with your parents when you were a teenager?" If you were for a very personal question like that, not only would you make your date feel very uncomfortable, s/he might just decide to cut that date short and never see you again. Whereas a casual chat about the films we like is fairly benign and a very safe topic: furthermore, you can learn a lot about a person as they explain why a film resonated with them on a personal level. They could make the answer very personal or they could steer clear of that and instead describe how the awesome action sequences were or if they loved the great soundtrack but that choice is theirs and they feel like they are in control. 

Rule 3: Stay away from religion and politics until you know them well. 

Obviously, these are tricky issues that could introduce an element of conflict and disagreement into your rather brief and young relationship. For example, I often talk about the situation with Covid-19 with my clients as that's something that is affecting everyone at the moment, but I would keep it general and ask them about how they are coping with the lockdown or if they have to take on some homeschooling responsibilities as a parent. However, I wouldn't ask more provocative questions like, "do you think Boris Johnson is doing a good job handling this pandemic?" Clearly I have an opinion on the issue - he is a useless idiot way out of his depth and I wish he had done us all a favour by dying of Covid-19 when he got infected last year. But imagine if the client said to me, "I think he is doing a brilliant job." Oh then I would either have to challenge that opinion or grudgingly bite my tongue - either way, I have already introduced conflict into the conversation, something I really want to avoid when trying to build rapport! I did find out recently that one of my best clients in the UK was for a short while involved in politics - I took a gamble and asked him which political party he was involved in and it was the Conservatives. Now that's clearly a party that I really hate, I did carefully avoid introducing any conflict into the conversation (since I was the one who asked the question and opened Pandora's box) by saying, "I wish the Conservative party had more people like you involved in their politics - that would make them a lot more likable and electable." My delicate response pleased him as I did pay him a compliment whilst making it clear that I didn't like the Conservative party. Phew. So I carefully placed the cover back on the Pandora's box after that and stepped away from it. 

I would say that this is something that if handled with enough tact, it needn't be a problem: allow me to share an incident I witnessed. Years ago when I lived in a block of flats, there was an event organized by the residents' association and I introduced a Portuguese neighbour to one of the ladies who worked at the management company who happened to be Spanish. They picked up on the fact that they were both Catholics and the conversation then shifted to, "oh so which church do you go to?" I suppose they felt that talking about their churches wouldn't be a controversial topic that they had to avoid since they were both clearly Catholics, contrast that to my case: I'm an atheist who doesn't believe in organized religion. I am more than happy to discuss why I feel this way about any kind of religion of course, but I do worry that my strong stance on the issue might make some religious people feel uncomfortable, because I don't want it to come across as a personal attack of course. Don't get me wrong - I respect the right to religious freedom. People should be free to do what they want when it comes to their religion as long as they leave me alone to make up my own mind on the matter but if they pry into how I feel about religion, then they're uncovering the fact that I do believe that they are barking up the wrong tree and believing in something that is completely fake. Now that does come across as a personal attack of course, that's why in the interest of maintaining the peace and building rapport, I tend to avoid the topics of religion and politics when talking to people I do not know well, especially when there are safer, less controversial topics to talk about. 

Rule 4: Don't make any assumptions, ask questions instead. 

I had a conference call recently with "Dave" (not his real name), he did note that I had a Chinese surname and asked me where I was born - I told him that I was born and raised in Singapore, but had spent the last 24 years in Europe. Dave then latched onto the fact that I was from Singapore and declared, "I love Singapore, what a great government you have there!" At which point I thought, what a fucking idiot Dave is. Firstly, he assumed that I would be pleased by his statement and could build rapport with it when quite the opposite happened! I left Singapore because of a number of reasons, but I certainly do not think highly of the government there and that was part of the reason why I felt I was better off in Europe than Singapore. Secondly, I was upset that Dave had made that assumption instead of phrasing it in a question like, "so Alex, having lived in both London and Singapore, what do you think about the government in Singapore compared to what you've experienced in the West?" That would leave the option for me to tell Dave how I felt about the government of Singapore and to be fair, I have both good and bad things to say about them. Furthermore, I had only just met Dave (online, not even in person - because of the pandemic, a lot of networking is now done online); he certainly did not know me well enough to even make a calculated guess about how I might feel about the issue. Of course, this was simply a reflection of Dave's rather poor social skills and I chose not to speak to him again after that awkward conversation. No, I simply can't build a business relationship with someone like that, it would be just too much hard work for too little reward. 

Let's turn this around and imagine that if I found out that Dave was passionate about football - I then make an assumption that he would like Manchester United and started saying how Manchester United is the greatest football team. How would Dave react? Well that depend entirely on whether or not he liked Manchester United - it would be a gamble. If he liked Manchester United, then he would be pleased that we had something in common. If he hated them, then it could potentially introduce conflict into the relationship instead of building rapport. For the record, I take no interest in football at all and thus I do not support any football team. But even if I did support a football team, the key issue is whether I am trying to build rapport with this person I have just met or if I am trying to convince him that the football team I like is the best football team in the world. Obviously, my priority is to build rapport and in this case, I would avoid any kind of statement that might introduce conflict so early in the conversation. So how I would handle the situation is to simply ask him a question like, "Dave, which team do you support?" And when I got the answer, I would follow up with, "why are they your favourite team?" That would be a risk-free way for me to try to have a conversation about football with Dave, allowing me to build rapport with him. After all, the whole point of these conversations is to have a chance to build that relationship by learning more about each other, why take the risk of hazarding a guess with an assumption when you can simply ask the other party to volunteer that information? There is zero incentive to make assumptions in this context. 

Rule 5: Be aware of local cultural norms

I do realize that in certain cultures, the social norms when it comes to such interactions would be different. In Korean culture for example, you have different ways to address people depending on their age, gender, their relation to you and how well you know them: as a consequence, it isn't considered rude for a Korean person you have just met to ask you how old you are, because they're trying to figure out which term to use to address you appropriately. Contrast that to English-speaking cultures in the West where we have just one word "you" to address everyone from your best friend to the Queen. I have found East Asian people to be quite blunt and tactless at times - I remember how my neighbour once mortally offended my sister when she said, "woah you have put on weight!" Did she mean to insult my sister by calling her fat? Was she deliberately trying to hurt my sister's feelings? I don't think so, perhaps she was trying to express an interest in my sister's health and well-being but simply lacked the social skills to do that in a more tactful and sensitive manner. I did encounter this in Shenzhen when I was attending a conference in 2018. I had only met this lady who worked for the Chinese government (let's call her Ms Zhang) for a few hours. I got along quite well with her whilst being somewhat formal as I had only just met her; so after the big dinner we had with some of the guests of the event, I told everyone there was a great ice cream place around the corner and if anyone was up for some excellent Chinese ice cream. Ms Zhang giggled, then reached over and rubbed my tummy, as if to suggest that I was too fat to have ice cream after dinner. I was quite shocked as I expected a very good friend to do something like that, not an official representing the Chinese government whom I had only just met a few hours ago at a business event run by the Chinese government! 

I spoke to a Chinese friend about that incident, he explained that Ms Zhang wasn't trying to make fun of me or insult me by rubbing my tummy - sure that's the kind of thing a close friend may do (and get away with it), but in doing that, Ms Zhang was sending out the message, "feel free to treat me like a close friend rather than a formal business associate. We can relax and be informal like good friends." I would chalk that down that incident to a cultural misunderstanding - after all, whilst I did converse with Ms Zhang only in Mandarin (even though she did speak English quite fluently), I suppose I had sent out the message that culturally I was as Chinese as she was and so she felt at liberty to treat me like one of her Chinese friends whilst I doubt she would have had the audacity to try something similar with one of the other guests who were Australians or Europeans, given that such a gesture might be seen as impolite by most white people. In the West, issues such as weight or age are seen as intensely personal and you could easily offend someone by even trying to raise the subject - it is such a taboo. Whereas in other cultures like in China, South Korea or Japan, these boundaries are different because the cultures are quite different. The conclusion is that one should always try to make a moment to question if someone is acting the way they do because it is normal within their culture to do so or if they were just idiots with very poor social skills; in the case of Ms Zhang in Shenzhen, it was evidently the former and not the latter. 

This brings me full circle back to Mrs Wu, the lady in Taipei who questioned my work life balance and suggested that I was working too hard to think about starting a family. Was she merely doing what Ms Zhang did - was this merely an attempt at being friendly that was somewhat lost in translation between our different cultures? Or was she simply being downright inappropriate? How would you have reacted to someone like Mrs Wu and Ms Zhang then? How do you handle this delicate issue of making small talk with strangers you have only just met? At which stage do you think it would be appropriate to ask a friend a rather personal question like that? How would you react if someone you had just met asked you a very personal question the way Mrs Wu did? Would you be quite offended or would you let them off the hook for that minor transgression then? Please leave a comment below, do let me know what you think. Many thanks for reading!