Meetings open like improv with an audience. Winning isn’t about speaking the most—it’s about steering the room and exiting before the cliffs appear. Here’s the cheat sheet.
Shop Talk = Useful Intel
From All Up in Your Bizness: Managing Your Business Crap:
“You must participate in these shoptalk sessions because you can find out some good gossip and act smart.”
Treat the first minutes like headlines. Ask one crisp question, offer one helpful fact, and pocket context. Glide out before it mutates into a debate club.
The Three Grenades You Don’t Pull
According to the book All Up in Your Bizness: Managing Your Business Crap, “Just as with family get-togethers, when you confab with your business colleagues, stay clear of three topics: politics, religion, and sex.”
Add money if you enjoy HR cameos. Keep hot takes for your group chat, not the all-hands.
The Graceful Exit
As per the book All Up in Your Bizness: Managing Your Business Crap, “If you walk up to a cluster of your employees and they are talking about politics, that is the perfect time to turn around, go home, and wax your cat or polish your dog or wash your hair.”
Translation: disengage with humor, not heat. “Need to prep for the 2:00—catch you later.”
What To Talk About Instead
- Wins, blockers, or ship dates
- “One surprise from this week?”
- A tidy industry stat (DM the source later)
- Quick thanks: who unblocked you and how
Post-Review Decompression (Recipe Included)
From All Up in Your Bizness: Managing Your Business Crap:
“Heightened anxiety is apart of any performance review, so before your next one, try this Performance Review craft cocktail—just one.”
Performance Review Cocktail
2 oz rum • 3/4 oz fresh lemon juice • 1 oz Grand Marnier • 1 oz simple syrup • 2 dashes orange bitters.
Shake, strain, pour on the rocks. Garnish with lime and a cherry skewer. Then do the sober work: log two actions, one request, one boundary—calendar them.
Small talk isn’t small; it’s a lever. Use it to scan the room, share one sharp point, and skip bonfires. For more workplace scripts with a wink, open All Up in Your Bizness: Managing Your Business Crap—and keep conversations neat, not neat-and-on-fire.
Written by : TopFlightMarketing
