There's An Actual Benefit To That ‘Annoying’ Small Talk Before A Meeting Starts, According To Research

We've all shared memes about it and even grumbled it out loud ourselves: "This meeting could have been an email." Meetings have become the bane of many workers' existence — and often, the idle chit-chat that ensues beforehand only makes them worse. 

But it turns out that deeply annoying small talk actually serves a purpose, and helps foster an all-important dynamic for any successful organization.

There's an actual benefit to annoying office small talk before meetings, according to Google's 'Project Aristotle' research.

Now I know what you're thinking: No, that small talk makes me want to burn the building down and I will not give it my stamp of approval. I hear you! I'm a yapper from a long line of yappers and even I often find myself wishing on a star that everyone around me would… well, shut up, frankly.

But! There's actual science to this. Kirsty Olinger, a workplace communication expert who consults with businesses and workers on how to improve their communication skills, recently explained how pre-meeting small talk is a force for good.

"That small talk that you do in the first five minutes of the meeting has way more value than you realize," she said, explaining that a major research study conducted by Google called "Project Aristotle" revealed that this idle chit-chat is actually part of what "makes a high-performing team."

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Google's 'Project Aristotle' found that 'psychological safety' is vital to successful teams, and small talk helps foster it.

"[Google] found that successful teams have nothing to do with where they're located or their background and experience," Olinger went on to say, "and everything to do with psychological safety."

Getting to know your teammates is one of the key ways to foster psychological safety. And one of the best ways to do that? Small talk before meetings.

But what the heck is psychological safety, you say? The term "team psychological safety" was coined by Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson, and she describes it as: "felt permission for candor."

The "felt" part is key, of course. Tons of workplaces SAY they want candor but the minute you give it you're in trouble. True team psychological safety is the opposite — a shared belief by all teammates that both positive and negative expression and owning up to mistakes are welcome within the team structure.

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Since small talk involves an unspoken sense of trust and respect between people, it both fosters and results from psychological safety.

Google's research found that forming a successful team requires mutual respect and openness, personal accountability, support for teammates, and showing both appreciation and humility when people on the team speak up.

Small talk may not seem related, but it is — a certain vulnerability is inherent to sharing the details of your life, even surface-level ones, with your coworkers. What if they think you're weird? What if they're judgmental about how you spend your time? The possibilities are endless.

Even if you keep the chatter work-related, talking openly about something like a deadline you're struggling to meet can be dangerous in some workplaces. In ones that have fostered psychological safety, these concerns are lessened if they exist at all.

Of course, for some of us, small talk is quite literally a struggle — many neurodivergent people, for instance, find it challenging if not impossible, because the social cues involved can be hard to decipher. As one neurodivergent person put it to Olinger on TikTok, "Small talk does anything but make me feel safe or comfortable."

But Olinger posits that this is actually an exception that proves the rule — in a psychologically safe workplace, a neurodivergent person can actually feel secure telling their colleagues they prefer not to be included in small talk without fear of the both subtle and overt forms of reprisal that such statements are often met with at work.

As Olinger put it, "When people know you well enough to know this about you, they won’t small talk and it will improve psychological safety." All valuable things for business leaders and managers to think about when it comes to creating that all-too-rare work environment where people feel safe to be their authentic selves.

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John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.