The Art of Communication

Socially Awkward Moments

• Robin Kermode and Sian Hansen • Season 1 • Episode 27

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Socially Awkward Moments.
You know those socially awkward moments, when you just want the floor to open up so you can disappear. 

You're at a party and you forget someone's name. And then you have to introduce them to someone else. Whose name you also can't remember.  You bump into your ex, and you have to meet their glamorous new partner. You're in a restaurant and you discover you've left your wallet at home.  Then there's the awkward silence in a lift ...

Join Robin Kermode and Sian Hansen as they tackle these and other awkward social moments, that we have all had,  in another fun episode. 


SPEAKER_01:

Hello and welcome to the Art of Communication Podcast with me, Robin Kermode. Have you ever wished you could become a confident speaker or presenter? Then why not join my online masterclass? Speak so your audience will listen. In 10 easy to follow modules, you can become a confident and authentic speaker. For more information, visit RobinKermode.com.

SPEAKER_00:

Hello, this is Sianne Hansen, and I'm here with Robin Kermode.

SPEAKER_01:

Hello.

SPEAKER_00:

And today we're going to talk about socially awkward moments. We all have them, don't we?

SPEAKER_01:

We've all had them.

SPEAKER_00:

The thing is, it doesn't matter if you're one of those social butterflies or you're one of those people who finds almost every social moment awkward. We all have to deal with them, don't we?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, it's when things go wrong, when things don't go to plan, and we're left with, as they used to say, and acting with egg on your face, it's embarrassing.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So this really comes from um a really deep place and an important one when we feel anxious or we feel foolish, then we feel very socially awkward. Is that right?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, everything in life, of course, the way humans have succeeded is that everything is about understanding what's happened before and therefore what might happen in the future. So if I put my hand in the fire and it's hot, I'm not going to do it again. So I learn. So we learn that this is dangerous, we don't do it. We learn that this is a safe thing to do, this is not a safe thing to do. So we go through life trying to be safe, trying not to look foolish, trying to preserve our mask of confidence, as it were. In socially awkward moments, what happens is that slips because people go, not quite as confident, or actually not quite as clever as you thought you were, or whatever it might be. And it's embarrassing.

SPEAKER_00:

And to make this even more complicated, these situations can pop up when you least expect them. Always when you least expect them. Well, because the community you're in has a different social norm and you didn't know what it was, you didn't know what the group rule was. Yes. Some of these are universal. But getting onto these awkward moments, it's not as if just because you're particularly confident, these awkward moments won't be happening. These happen anyway to all of us. So we're really looking for advice from you, Robin, about how to deal with them when they come along.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, here's a really simple one. You take a friend out for lunch, maybe a client or something like that, right? And you have a really nice lunch, and right at the end you say, I can have the bill, please, right? And the bill arrives and you don't have your wallet. Now your friend, your client, has to now pay the bill, even if you're going to reimburse them. It's just embarrassing. It's not that you've done anything wrong, but the whole point of taking them out for lunch was that it was going to be a fun thank you lunch.

SPEAKER_00:

No, no, no, no, let's talk this through. Do you actually get the other person to pay, or do you think of something else? I mean, do you call somebody and say, can you pay over the phone? I mean, what do you do?

SPEAKER_01:

If you know the restaurant well, I suppose you could say, Look, I'm so sorry, can I pop back this afternoon and pay for it? That kind of thing. But then what happens is your friend, your client will probably go, No, no, no, I'll I'll pay. And then now it's an embarrassing moment.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, we're still in the restaurant then, because I've been in situations like this where you're going out to a restaurant and the people you're with either are arguing amongst themselves loudly, loudly, or they're constantly complaining to the waiter. How do you deal with that?

SPEAKER_01:

My personality is to try to make everybody okay. So that's probably why I'm a coach now. But I would try to distract the situation. So I would ask the most vulnerable party there a question. So tell me a bit more about that. How did that go? Or how was that holiday or whatever? So I try to bring up something neutral that they can enthuse about and just to distract it. So I'm kind of there as a peacemaker, I suppose.

SPEAKER_00:

Right.

SPEAKER_01:

But purely by distraction.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I want to tell you the most awkward thing that ever happened to me in a restaurant is I was having lunch with somebody I'd known for 10 years, a business colleague actually. And at the end of the main course, the table was cleared, oddly, completely cleared, and two glasses of champagne arrived. And I looked out over to the corner of the restaurant and I saw all the staff standing there watching us. And this man turned to me and proposed. And he had never shared with me that he had feelings for me ever. Very unexpected, and everybody was watching, but I had to say no. So that was the socially awkward moment for me. And especially because we still had dessert and coffee to go.

SPEAKER_01:

And so public as well.

SPEAKER_00:

I have to say, I just said to him, our timing is off.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, that's diplomatic.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it was very diplomatic, but it was very awkward.

SPEAKER_01:

Things were different. The most embarrassing thing that happened to me was as a young actor, I remember going into a shop to buy something, like I'm buying a suit or something like this. And the man says, Oh, hello, very nice to see you. It's very nice to see you. He said, Haven't seen you for a while. And in those days, I was on television as an actor and doing sitcoms and things. And I assumed he'd see me on television. So Pride comes before a fall. And I said, Well, I don't think we've met before. No, no, no, no, we we have met before. And I said, I really don't think we have. And I said, You might have seen me in this show and in this show, and I shouldn't have done this. And I say this story against myself. And I carried on and on listing my whole CB. And finally he said, No, you came in last year and bought a pair of shoes off me. And I felt about one inch. We all can walk into these situations.

SPEAKER_00:

What about when you stop somebody and you say, It's wonderful to see you again, how are you? And it's somebody completely different.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, and I did that with Lulu once. Now, for those of you who don't know who Lulu is, Lulu was a very big pop star in the 60s. Well, she's still a big pop star now, but I was in the theater once and I saw her, because of course I've grown up with her, you you know her face so well. And I literally bumped into in the theater and I said, Hello, how lovely to see you. And she said, How are you? And I said, I'm fine. What are you up to? What are you doing? We had this whole conversation. Either she thought I was somebody else or she was just being very polite, which I think she was.

SPEAKER_00:

Now, there have been these moments, hasn't there, where let's say you're walking around a museum and you've walked away from whoever you're seeing the museum with, and you turn boldly because you think they're still standing next to you, but you turn boldly around to somebody who is a complete stranger and say, Darling, what do you think of this? And then you realize you just want to die inside when you do that, don't you?

SPEAKER_01:

Again, if you own up to it and you just say, Do you know what? I'm so sorry, I thought you were somebody else. Yeah, they will probably go, how lovely. So it's always about this mask of confidence slipping. If we don't have this mask of, I'm perfect, I never make mistakes, actually, something goes wrong, and we laugh at ourselves and we're okay. I think that's the golden secret.

SPEAKER_00:

Is it?

SPEAKER_01:

I remember doing a play once, and the whole scenery collapses. So imagine you're watching a play and there's a series of they're called flats, which is obviously like a huge piece of uh hardboard essentially, which have the scenery painted on them, and there's a series of these and they're all tied together at the back. Well, I was on stage once and all of them just collapsed. So we're now sitting there, we're doing a dining room table scene, so we're sitting there having our breakfast in this play, and all the scenery just collapses.

SPEAKER_00:

What did the audience do?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, the audience, of course, laugh their heads off because it's just embarrassing. Now, I was lucky because the actor playing my brother in the play, his character was an architect. So once the laughter fell down, I just said, Did you design this house? So my brother got another laugh. So the moral of the story really is whatever happens, we just have to accept it and deal with it. But pretending it hasn't happened, I don't think is the right answer.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I suppose it is, but you know, let's put ourselves in other people's shoes because there's some moments where it really mattered that you put your best foot forward, that you didn't say anything silly, that you made your best impression, and you just die inside, you know, like an interview getting into university. I wish I hadn't said that. I was so nervous.

SPEAKER_01:

Or I've been for job interviews, and certainly as a young actor, you go for lots of interviews. And I remember I had almost sort of verbal diarrhea. I just couldn't stop talking. And I wish the ground would open up and just say, Robin, stop talking. There was an inner voice saying, just stop talking.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, that is definitely something to remember. If you feel you're rambling, just stop. Yeah. Just stop. So let's get into a room, right? So I'm thinking a lift.

SPEAKER_01:

A very small room. Yes. Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. So you're getting into a lift, everybody's pointing one way, aren't they?

SPEAKER_01:

I think the awkward silence is the worst. Mind you, awkward silence is in loos, talking about small rooms for men. And this happens a lot, I find with my client. They'll say, Oh, can we have a break? We go to the bathroom. We end up both going to the bathroom together. No, and then there's this moment you're both standing there doing your business, both looking straightforward, of course. Do you then carry on a conversation during that process? And some people do.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, that is awkward. In the ladies' lie, you quite often do tell. No, no, you quite often, so you're both in a cubicle, but you have this funny game you play about who's going to come out first.

SPEAKER_01:

Why is that?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, no, only because it's a bit awkward at the sink to then be washing your hands. And maybe it's somebody you've just been in a meeting with, like you were saying, it is very awkward. You normally make some sort of comment like, I don't know, there's nice hand cream here.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes.

SPEAKER_00:

In order to smooth it over. But I think what we're talking about in both these circumstances, awkwardness in a small room, same thing in a waiting room. It could be for a doctor or an interview or whatever. Do you have any tips for that? Do you talk to other people or just bury yourself in a magazine?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, on the medical one, like a doctor's waiting room, if you say to somebody, you here for anything important, you can't go there because they may have something very serious wrong with them. Or similarly, maybe you don't want to talk about your symptoms or whatever. So in a medical waiting room situation, I wouldn't go, how's your day going? Because that would be probably highly inappropriate. I probably just go, good morning, and then read a newspaper. Because actually you don't probably really want to talk in a waiting room. But on a job interview situation, when you're all sitting there waiting, you might want to talk. The difficulty then, and certainly what I've had over the years in acting interviews, is often there are five of you sitting in the room, you're all up for the same acting job, you probably know each other anyway. And then how much do you engage with them or not? And I find personally, in those situations, if you spend too much energy chatting away, you're not as focused for the job. So I just tend to say maybe we'll grab a coffee afterwards.

SPEAKER_00:

So let's get into another awkward situation. What's it like in a changing room, like in a gym?

SPEAKER_01:

Oh. Is that awkward? Goodness. Is that awkward? Well, I find there are two types of people. There are those who wrap themselves in a towel and they do a kind of houdini thing, getting out of their clothes into their speedos or whatever they're wearing or their swimwear or something, or the gym kit. And there are others who just flagrantly flaunt themselves and they will spend as much time as possible standing there with no clothes on, drying their hair in front of a chatty. Oh, chatty coming right up close to you, chatty, with absolutely no clothes on at all.

SPEAKER_00:

I have to say, ladies changing rooms, it's pretty civilized. I mean, no, we talk all the time, but I've never seen anybody particularly shy. You know, you put your clothes on quickly, you don't hang about. But I want to switch the situation. I tell you what's really awkward. Yeah. If you go back to your regular hairdresser and you've had a cut in between from someone else, or you've just stopped going to your regular hairdresser and you bump into them.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

What do you do about something like that? I suppose they're just used to it.

SPEAKER_01:

I I find out if I've talked to hairdressers about that and they say there is a life expectancy of a client, and they say they do expect that people move for all sorts of reasons. And sometimes they just want to change. It could be something's going on in their lives and they go, Do you know what? I want to reinvent myself, and they think the haircut will do it, and they go to somebody else. So I think hairdressers don't take it personally.

SPEAKER_00:

But it is slightly awkward for some people. You know, if you've been to a hairdresser after many years, you decide to try someone else, and you're walking down the street and you bump into them, it's terribly awkward.

SPEAKER_01:

It is, because the nervousness is going to make you ramble.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

I think you just say, Do you know what? I was going through a crisis in my life. I just wanted to change. Normally, if we give too much, it's like when we're children and we say, Oh, I haven't done the homework. Much better to say, I was too tired, or whatever. But what we tend to do is we tend to invent a whole lie that goes on and on and on, and then they go, none of that happened, did they? The dog didn't eat your homework, you know, all that.

SPEAKER_00:

There's one thing that really bothers me, and this is where I want to bring it up. You go to someone's house and you've maybe been invited there, and it's a drinks party, or you're there for lunch, or whatever it is, and you've dressed up nicely, and their dog jumps on you. What do you do? And you have to say, Gucci Wujo, we love you, you're so sweet, and whatever. And they keep bouncing on you. What do you do? And maybe you're frightened of them. Yeah. And then the cat sits next to you. What do you do?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, they're covered in hair. And you're covered in hair. And you just have to go, oh, lovely. That's part of being a friend. Do you? Hopefully, if they were a true friend, they would spot it quite quickly and go, You're not a cat person, and they move the cat away or something like that. That's really down to them being a good host. But you're right. Do you want to ruin the evening?

SPEAKER_00:

No, you don't. You don't really, do you? You just take your clothes to the dry cleaner. I think you can. I think you do.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Stuff happens, you move on.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. The most awkward social moment ever is when you send the email to the wrong person.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, email, text, all that to the wrong, and you just press send and you go, oh no, I thought it no, it's gone to the wrong person. You can't retrieve it, can you?

SPEAKER_00:

No, you can't. Well, you can, but you've already read it. And then you get a note from that person saying that they want to retrieve it, but you've already read it. And I'll just tell you the worst one that I I mean it wasn't me. Yeah, I was on the receiving end where a headhunter had contacted me and said that they wanted to explore an option for me with a new job. And I had said something like, How did you get my name? And they'd said, Oh, a friend gave it. And I said, Well, normally you would have sent me an email or something and introduced yourself. But anyway, here we are on the phone. How can I help you? And she explained what the role was and whatever. And it turned out actually, she'd done a lot of deep due diligence on me, and she knew a lot about me. And I just felt really awkward about this. I thought, you're a complete stranger. I have no idea who you are. And it's a phone call.

SPEAKER_01:

But it's all public knowledge, presumably.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, yeah, but still, it's just a bit odd that you'd bring somebody a cold and tell them so much about yourself. Anyway, I was perfectly polite, but a few moments later, an email came through from her to me, and it said, I've just spoken to Sianne. She's a really difficult woman. No, she yeah, yeah. She's a she's a really difficult woman, but I think.

SPEAKER_01:

Sorry, I'm saying no on both accounts. No, she didn't do that.

SPEAKER_00:

But I think I've swung around to the idea of being interested in this job vacancy. All the best, Caroline. And I went, whoa, that's cheeky. And then within a few minutes, she quickly wrote and said, I'm sorry that wasn't for you, that was for my boss.

SPEAKER_01:

Of course, yeah, but the damage is done, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, yeah, absolutely, completely done.

SPEAKER_01:

When something like that happens, you hold your hand up and go, I'm sorry, I made a mistake. Because if you own up, it's always best. It's only when we pretend that we're cleverer than we are, or that we're smarter than we are in some sense, or that we haven't made a mistake, just own up to it and laugh at ourselves, and it's kind of okay.

SPEAKER_00:

I would say one thing though, about texts and emails and any other social media communication you make. I would say just assume it's public. Don't put anything like that on an email or a text, because it could be front page of the newspaper one day. You never, never know.

SPEAKER_01:

I agree. And emails, of course, the chain link can often get forwarded on. So even if you're having a conversation with somebody, that can get forwarded on as part of the whole chain.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

But I think the simple way, as you say, is never put anything in writing that you wouldn't want to say to somebody's face.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, which cuts out the whole of Twitter because a lot of people hide behind that, don't they?

SPEAKER_01:

That's like a road rage thing, isn't it? Is people feel empowered in their car.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And I remember talking to a lorry driver once, a big burly guy driving one of these huge, great articulated lorries. And he says, somebody cut him up in his car the other day, you know, with their car, and was sort of shouting abuse out of the window. And he rolled this window down saying, I don't think you'd be quite as confident if you weren't inside your car. And I think the same applies to Twitter and these things. There's a kind of anonymity that makes people feel they can say what they like.

SPEAKER_00:

Do you know what? Just thinking about cars. When you're taking your kid to school, do not have an argument with somebody else in a car near a school because it's bound to be another parent who you're going to see four years. You're absolutely right. Just be very, very polite. I'm just offering that as a piece of advice.

SPEAKER_01:

The other thing about cars, as you know, I used to have a Toyota Prius, and a Toyota Prius in London certainly was one of the cars that a lot of Uber drivers had. And I was sitting at traffic lights once, an entire family got in the car. No. And they got in the car and said, Oh, thanks very much, Waterloo Station. I said, I'm sorry, what do you do? They said, You're an Uber. I said, I'm not an Uber. And they went, Oh, I'm so sorry. And they got out.

SPEAKER_00:

Now that's awkward. Now, Robin, the most socially awkward moment, I think, for some people, particularly people in big families, and you know what it's like, modern-day families now, is one where you walk in the room and your ex-partner, your ex-girlfriend, your ex-husband is going to be in the room.

SPEAKER_01:

You just hope you're looking good at those moments.

SPEAKER_00:

But maybe they have a new family now and their kids are there, or whatever it is. What would you advise people to do in that situation?

SPEAKER_01:

Like everything in life, take it with good grace. If somebody's happy and they've moved on and they've got a new family, even though inside you might be going, Oh, that's ouch. But you have to go, I'm really pleased for you and nice to see you. And you know, ultimately, you know this, I mean what goes around comes around. If we if we wish other people well, it does us best in the end.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And can we just end on this note that it's not about being the perfect social butterfly? And it's not about constantly worrying that you did the wrong thing or that you didn't react well in that situation. I think the point is it happens to everybody, every age, every nationality, every human being on the planet has a socially awkward moment. Quite often, actually, and we're constantly worried about it, no matter who we are. But you know what? What do you think?

SPEAKER_01:

Just say you're absolutely right. That's a foolish thing to have done. Oh, I'm sorry I made that mistake, but don't keep repeating it. Laugh at yourself and move on.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Robin, again, a brilliant conversation. And what you've done is lay bare that we do have weird and difficult and awkward social moments, all of us. We've laughed throughout this whole podcast, and the reason we've laughed about it is because that's how we deal with those situations.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, but it has happened to us, it will happen to us again. It happens to everybody all the time.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So thank you very much. Here's to the next podcast.

SPEAKER_01:

We'll see you next time. Have you ever wished you could become a confident speaker or presenter? Then why not join my online masterclass? Speak so your audience will listen. In ten easy to follow modules, you can become a confident and authentic speaker. For more information, visit robinker.com