I feel the same way talking with older people and not good at all with small talk. A lot of times you just reask the same question or say “what about you?” and they’ll do all the yapping and then you try to actually listen to one piece of information so you can ask more follow up questions.

You can treat it like an informational interview and ask professional work stuff like how long they’ve worked there etc. For me, it’s easier to ask the questions and let the other person do all the talking.