If you want to be a successful manager and an effective leader you need to be able to do trivia. You may have an impressive CV, you may have the right experience, relevant skills and an extensive knowledge but if you do not do trivia you will get the interview but not the job.
There is good trivia and bad trivia. Bad trivia is where every meeting with the Chief Exec starts with comments about how their football team got on at the weekend. People who clearly have no interest in football feel obliged to contribute in order to keep in with the boss. It serves only to irritate and alienate people. However if during the course of going round the table getting management updates one of your colleagues gives a particularly long list of issues and concerns and you say well at least your football team is doing well, this is good trivia. It is intended to lighten the mood and take some tension out of the situation.
Good trivia isn’t saying did you have a good Christmas, good trivia is saying did the surprise present you planned for your partner go down well? This shows you are taking an interest in the person, you have listened to what they said and remembered. Asking a colleague what’s the latest news on their son or daughter’s gap year adventure would be another example of good trivia. In fact good trivia isn’t trivia at all, it’s a non work conversation in which both parties share information about their non work lives. Trivia etiquette requires that if someone asks you a question like this you respond fully and then ask them a similar question.
I have never seen “must be able to do trivia” or “needs to be able to make small talk to strangers” on a person specification for a top management job but the assessment process for most senior management posts involves an informal meeting where candidates are required to socialise with stakeholders. This is about exchanging trivia with strangers who will later be asked how you came over. You would be making a fundamental error if you thought this was an opportunity to show off your work related knowledge. It is in fact about your social skills and whether you are perceived as friendly, approachable and interesting, in other words someone they could work with. Even in the formal interview the panel is looking for clues about your personality. So it is not just getting the answer right it is about how you are coming across, yes they want someone who is confident and knowledgeable but they don’t want stern and overbearing. Hence a good piece of interview advice given to me by my manager – smile.
If this all sounds a bit trivial then think of it this way, senior management posts need people of substance who have passion and gravitas but they also need people who can relate to a whole range of different people who are comfortable talking to anyone and can immediately make people feel comfortable about talking to them. So there is nothing trivial about being able to do trivia.
Blair McPherson is author of People Management in a harsh financial climate.www.blairmcpherson.co.uk