How to Be Less Awkward Around People (Without Becoming Someone Else)

To be less awkward, move your attention off yourself and onto the other person, the topic or the room. Awkwardness is mostly self-monitoring: a running commentary on how you are coming across, which uses up the attention you need for the actual conversation. Timing slips, you miss what they said, and then you have something new to monitor.

Two pieces of research make this easier to believe. People notice your stumbles far less than you think, and after a conversation they tend to like you more than you think. You do not need a new personality. You need somewhere better to put your attention.

What awkwardness actually is

Nobody is awkward alone in a room. It is a social feeling, and it shows up when you are trying to manage two jobs at once: having the conversation, and watching yourself have the conversation.

The watching is the problem. While you are checking whether your face looks normal and rehearsing your next sentence, you are not listening, so your next sentence lands a beat late or slightly off-topic. You notice that, and the watching gets louder.

It is worth saying plainly: this is very common, and it often comes from caring a lot about getting things right with people. It is not a defect. It is a lot of effort pointed in an unhelpful direction.

Two findings worth carrying around

The spotlight effect

In a 2000 study, Thomas Gilovich, Victoria Medvec and Kenneth Savitsky had students walk into a room of peers wearing a T-shirt with Barry Manilow's face on it, which the students found embarrassing. The wearers guessed that about half the room would notice the shirt. In reality it was closer to a quarter. People consistently overestimate how much others notice about them, including their mistakes.

The reason is that everyone else is busy running the same check on themselves. There is far less attention available for your awkward moment than it feels like from the inside.

The liking gap

In 2018, Erica Boothby, Gus Cooney, Gillian Sandstrom and Margaret Clark published research on what they called the liking gap. They looked at strangers chatting in a lab, people meeting at a workshop and first-year university roommates. Again and again, people underestimated how much the other person liked them and enjoyed their company. Among roommates, the gap lasted for months.

The researchers' explanation is that people are so focused on their own performance that they miss the positive signals the other person is giving. Which is the self-monitoring problem again, from a different angle.

The conversation you left thinking went badly probably went better than you think. The other person may well be having the same worry about you.

How to be less awkward in conversations

Give your attention a job

Telling yourself to stop self-monitoring does not work. Giving your attention something else to do does. Try to get curious about one specific thing: what they actually do all day, how they ended up here, why they light up about that topic. Curiosity is the opposite of self-monitoring and it is very hard to do both.

Ask, then follow up

Follow-up questions are the most reliable conversation tool there is, and they take the spotlight off you. Research led by Karen Huang in 2017 found that people who asked more follow-up questions were better liked. “How did that happen?” and “What was that like?” will carry you a long way, and they work in almost any conversation.

Name the awkward thing

A stumble you try to hide grows. A stumble you name shrinks. If you lose your train of thought, say so: “Sorry, I've completely lost where I was going with that.” If you both start talking at once: “You go.” If you say something clumsy: “That came out wrong, what I meant was…” People find this relaxing, because it shows them the conversation can survive a mistake.

Keep two or three things ready

Have a couple of easy things up your sleeve: something you have been doing lately, a question you like asking, a small story from your week. Not a script, just a floor to stand on when your mind empties. How to start a conversation has openers for most situations.

Slow down by about ten per cent

Nerves speed people up. Talking slightly slower, pausing before you answer, and letting short silences sit makes you look more relaxed, and after a while you start to feel it too.

How to be less awkward around people in social situations

• Arrive early. It is much easier to talk to three people as they trickle in than to walk into a room of thirty already in groups.
• Give yourself a role. Help in the kitchen, take coats, run the music. A job gives you a reason to talk to people and something to do with your hands.
• Look for open groups. Two or three people standing in a loose horseshoe are open to joining. A tight closed circle probably isn't. Stand at the edge, listen for a moment, then add to what they are already talking about.
• Talk to the other person on the edge. There is nearly always someone else who feels exactly like you do. They will be grateful.
• Leave on purpose. Decide roughly when you will go, and go then. “I'm heading off, it was great to meet you” is a complete sentence.

If big rooms drain you regardless, that may be temperament rather than awkwardness, and making friends as an introvert is a better place to start.

How to be less awkward at work

Work gives you something most social situations don't: structure and repetition. Use them.

• Ask about the work. “What are you working on at the moment?” is never strange at work, and people usually enjoy explaining.
• Arrive at meetings a minute early. The chat before the agenda is where colleagues become people.
• Have a kitchen line. “How's your week going?” plus one detail of your own: “Mine's been all spreadsheets.”
• On video calls, say hello by name when you join, and use the chat for a small comment if speaking up feels like too much.
• Follow up later. “How did the presentation go?” the next day shows you listened, and it is an easy way to start the next conversation.

Familiarity does most of the work here. The fifth conversation with someone is far less awkward than the first, so small and frequent beats big and rare.

Afterwards: skip the post-mortem

Many people are fine in the moment and then spend the evening replaying everything they said. Given the liking gap, those replays are working from bad data. If this is you, how to stop overthinking what you said is written for exactly that, and fear of judgement goes into where the worry comes from.

When it's more than awkwardness

Feeling awkward is normal. But if the fear of how you come across is stopping you going to things you want to go to, speaking at work, or eating in front of people, that may be social anxiety, which is common and responds well to treatment. It is worth mentioning to a GP or doctor rather than trying to tough out alone.

And if you want somewhere to practise saying what you actually think without an audience watching, Spillr lets you post under an alias, where people see only what you wrote and your city, never your name or face.