Stuck in Small Talk? Try These Communication Techniques to Win them Over | Matt Abrahams

a lot of our communication in fact I would argue most of our communication is spontaneous it's not the plan prepared types of talks it's what happens in the moment somebody asks you a question somebody asks for feedback you make a mistake you have to fix it you're you're at a social Gathering and you have to make small talk for anyone who's creative this is critical how do you pitch your idea how do you convey what it is you're trying to capture how do you share the experience that you've created for the people that you're speaking

to you do that through communication and often that communication is spontaneous Matt welcome to the show thanks so much for being a guest awesome to be here Chase thanks for having me I'm excited for our conversation well one of the things that happens whether we like it or not in podcast land is you and I have a few minutes to chat before we start recording and one of the things that came up before we did so was the value in being able to communicate very clearly and effectively we all know that as as artists as

entrepreneurs as you know the audience for the show uh so with that backdrop in mind I'm wondering if you can Orient our audience this morning a little bit about you and your work and why this this you know this the communication is Central to what you talk about and in your studies and in the books you published the podcast that you host and why that's going to matter to our listeners well thanks for the opportunity I I believe fundamentally communication underlies all of our success uh anything we do we often have to create and create

it first and then communicate it second and we need to think about deliberately how we best communicate in my many many years of doing this work I helped people in a very prepared planned way to communicate and then I began to notice that a lot of our communication in fact I would argue most of our communication is spontaneous it's not the plan prepared types of talks it's what happens in the moment somebody asks you a question somebody asks for feedback you make a mistake you have to fix it you're you're at a social Gathering and

you have to make small talk so the focus of my work has evolved over time to to move from speaking in a planned way which is still very important but to becoming more comfortable and confident and compelling in what I call spontaneous speaking situations and for anyone who's creative this is critical how do you pitch your idea how do you convey what it is you're trying to capture how do you share the experience that you've created for the people that you're speaking to you do that through communication and often that communication is spontaneous see I

love that you are aware as most people out there in the world think that that creators and entrepreneurs that they they create work they put it out there in the world and the work the work the the creative act does all of the work in promoting itself and you know if you know uh anything you scratch just beyond the surface one finds out that that is as you pointed out in your introduction it's not the case right we all need to communicate our ideas and the ability to communicate is directly correlated with that work whatever

we've created that it's It's ability to even find an initial Toe Hold in the world so I understand that you work with creators with entrepreneurs and you know having read your book you've got case studies that that span you know all sorts of different Industries and disciplines um how did you get interested in this topic fund mentally and what made you want to go deep well when it comes to spontaneous speaking it's actually the Confluence of three different streams that that led to this uh first and foremost you might have noticed my last name starts

with a B all through growing up from elementary school all through high school I knew when I would be speaking in class and I always knew where my seat was I always was sitting first front only twice in my life Chase has anybody ever come before me and that was somebody with the name Abby and somebody the name Abbott so my whole life I've been spontaneous speaking you know when the teacher would say tell me what you did that summer I was the one who had to go first so I've always been keenly aware of

what it feels like to be put on the spot I teach at Stanford's Graduate School of Business I've been there for almost 13 years now I teach strategic communication and about seven years ago The deans of the business school came to me and said can you help us solve this problem many of our MBA students some of the best and brightest business Minds in the world were struggling when the evil mean teacher would say what do you think I'm sure chase you remember cold calls right and and so our students would freeze up even though

they knew the answer so the dean's asked me can you help and that's what really got me fundamentally interested in the academic side of spontaneous speaking and paired with that over time through friendships I've made and co-teaching that I've done with people who study improvisation I began to realize that there's a match between improv and communication which is really about spontaneity I've taught for many years with my colleague Adam Tobin a class where we blend improv and communication and it's really those three ideas that got me to where I am today with a methodology that

can help people feel more comfortable and confident speaking in the moment let's talk about this thing called Charisma okay most most people I think erroneously believe that Charisma is this naturally born automatic uh thing for some and something that others will not have but again you just scratch one layer beneath the surface and while that may come easy for some people based on personality or they're probably the you know their environment growing up but these the ability to communicate clearly to be funny the ability to um to tell a story to capture someone's attention those

are learnable skills I would love and you you referenced in your last answer methodology yeah so right now there's someone who's listening to this saying I would love to be able to pitch my ID Bill I'd love to be able to communicate more clearly to cat to hold the attention of the boardroom in an MBA as you mentioned situation um so Orient us around this methodology that you've been working on for some time there at Stanford sure so so I I hear two questions in that first is charisma and Charisma is one of these ethereal

things that's really hard to pin down uh it's like that the definition of pornography you know it when you see it same thing with Charisma it's really hard to land what is it it's a combination uh I I would say some key ingredients to Charisma involve immediacy being present being listening and engaging with somebody it's about really focusing and targeting a message to make it relevant and it's about having a passion and an energy that's conveyed along with a little dash of warmth those two to me are the key Central ingredients but along those lines

which by the way I think all of those can be learned in practice Yeah but you have to also have a relevant engaging message to say right so it's not only your demeanor it's also the message and that's where this methodology comes in and at the highest level the six steps can be broken down into mindset and messaging so first and foremost we need to work on our anxiety most people get nervous in high stakes communication situations regardless of if it's planned or spontaneous it's a little more intense when it's spontaneous the planning and the

practicing can help reduce it a little bit so I talk about and have for decades helped people work on how to manage anxiety around speaking my first book was called speaking up without freaking out and it's really to help people there once we've done that we have to do some more mindset work we have to see these as opportunities not as threats we have to get out of our own way the biggest inhibitor to our communicating well spontaneously is ourselves we we judge we evaluate we get in the way we have to listen well that's

a mindset there's this notion of having a listening mindset so if we can do those things start to manage anxiety get out of Our Own Way see these situations as opportunities and listen and be very present that sets us up for the second part of the methodology which is really around messaging and I am a huge huge believer in structure many people who are creative many entrepreneurs when you use the word structure they see it as a bad word they see it as something that confines you I actually think and there are many people who

believe this that structure sets you free it gives you the opportunity to play and I'm happy to share more about my thoughts on that but having a structure can help I'll give you a very simple structure for anybody who needs to explain what it is they've done it's three questions what so what now what if you're explaining an artwork you've created if you're explaining the business you've just founded what is it that's the what your idea your belief your artwork your service the so what why is it important and relevant to the person you're talking

to we know if you make something relevant they'll pay attention and listen and remember and then the now what is what comes next let me show it to you would you please consider investing what questions do you have so simply by answering what so what and now what you actually have a structure from which and through which you can be more creative and then the last step is to be focused many of us when we communicate spontaneously ramble on and on and I fear this answer is is unfortunately an example of that but no no

but the point is we have to be I I call it the f word of spontaneous speaking we have to be focused because many of us Ramble On and On as we're discovering what we want to say as we say it but if we have a structure and a proper mindset we can be much more focused so Charisma is ethereal but there's some key elements and then there's a logical structure around mindset and message that can help you communicate better in the moment this is what I these are largely the um signals that I took

from your latest book think faster talk smarter um I also want to talk a little bit about the podcast sure but before we do let's go back to again and this is really well speaking of structure very very clearly laid out in the book and as someone who is um I think I fit that definition of I learned early on in my career and I've written about this in my last book creative calling this I originally thought that structure was a product of the man and there to keep me down right and the irony is

that when I put some structure around my life and my thinking and some of my projects it actually did create a bunch more freedom and this sort of this handshake between um being able to have a creative mindset and do the work that I wanted to do and have some structure around it it I felt like it supercharged my work and I wished I'd realized this years earlier right but I do want to focus uh initially on the anxiety piece sure because we are our biggest obstacle right as if I thought back to my own

sort of jumbles early speeches that I gave or media opportunities when someone asked me a question that I wasn't expecting or didn't practice and I was just a mouthful of marbles um how do we get out of our own way what are some of the you know how if if someone hears comes to you and said hey I'm adding some coaching right like I can't get out of my own way I'm always judging my own performance in real time which you know say I'm as as you articulate in the book even if I think there

was a director was uh you know giving a speech about his own movies and couldn't actually articulate anything about them because he was so stuck on not remembering the script or I think yeah yeah it was Michael Bay he yeah exactly they're notorious they had a had a moment where the teleprompter didn't work and he he just couldn't manage through it so this is a I mean Michael Bay is probably listening to the show so there we go let's not rub it in right let's not rub it in let's not make it more anxious but

I do believe uh uh that you know getting over anxiety yeah is fundamental and yet requesting that someone who's listening just get over their anxieties not really a valuable right you know request so help those who are listening happy to who yeah help help us so so let me share a few things first to level set most people feel anxious in high stakes communication situations planned or spontaneous uh upwards of 75 of people report it is their number one fear so you're not alone a lot of us feel very isolated because we see people like

you chase very articulate we we watch uh Executives we see TED talks and we say gosh those people are so amazing most of them have had coaching and most of them have worked very hard to get there so there's this this false impression that it's easy from for most people and it's not it's very difficult when it comes to managing anxiety you have to take a two-pronged approach you have to manage both symptoms and so forces so the symptoms are the things that you physiologically experience some of us feel our heart rate pounding some of

us start speaking quickly some of us blush and turn red these are normal and natural responses your body is in fight or flight and I'm happy if you wish to talk about why academics like myself who study this think that we're under threat but your body is treating speaking in public as if you're under threat so we have to deal with those sources or symptoms and then we also have to think about sources sources are the things that initiate and exacerbate our anxiety so if you don't mind I'll give you a couple examples of each

that could help people sound all right sing it on the by the biggest thing you can do to manage symptomatic expressions of your anxiety is deep breathing deep belly breaths the kind you would do if you've ever done yoga or Tai Chi or Qigong these deep lower abdomen breaths and for decades Chase I've been telling people just take deep breaths it'll help you on my podcast I was fortunate enough to interview Andrew huberman you might have heard of him he's big into breath work and he shared with me something that just totally flipped my my

idea about it he said it's not the inhalation that matters it's the exhale it is during the exhale that the magic happens and so it's really important for us to follow a simple rule just make your exhale twice as long as your inhale so if you take a three count in take a six count out and all you have to do is do that for two or three times and it will help reduce the autonomic nervous systems firing that brings that fight or flight if you're somebody who gets shaky when you get nervous that's adrenaline

adrenaline's job is to move you from threat towards safety so in your communication be it virtual or in person add movement that's purposeful not random so if you're standing in front of a room speaking take a step in in a big welcoming gesture that gives that adrenaline a place to go if you're virtual lean in move in gesture this gives is that adrenaline a place to go you'll stop shaking if you turn red and I know you have a vested interest in this either somebody you know who's curious about this I turn red too uh

when you get nervous your body tenses up your heart starts beating faster so you're pumping more blood through tighter tubes this means your blood pressure goes up it's like you're exercising most of us when we exercise we turn red we sweat that's because we're getting hotter so we have to cool ourselves down single best thing you can do hold something cold in the palms of your hand the palms of our hands are thermoregulators for our body if you've ever had a fever and put a cold compress on your forehead and it's reduced your temperature Palms

of your hand do the same thing in fact I bet many of your listeners today if it was a cold morning drank cold tea I'm sorry warm tea or coffee held it in their hands and felt warm as a result of holding the the cup just do it in reverse hold something cold before I got on our call today I was holding a cold bottle of water because I get excited I get a little nervous about doing these things hopefully I'm not blushing in front of you right now as a result of that so so

these are things we can do Chase to manage symptoms allow me just one more moment to talk about sources sources are the things that initiate an exacerbate anxiety many of us are made nervous by worrying about the future consequences of our action we all have goals when we communicate if you're an entrepreneur you might want funding if you're a creative person you might want support for your Endeavor and we're worried like oh my goodness what will happen if I don't get that support or I don't get that funding so what's making us nervous is we're

worried about a future potential future consequence how do we short-circuit that get present oriented if you're in the Present Moment by definition you're not worried about the future I'll be very curious to chase things you do to get present oriented but for me things I do is I'll do something physical I'll take a walk around the building I went for a run this morning before this call you can talk to people uh in an audience get to know them we did that before we came on live and that's a way of getting present oriented I

do do what athletes do listen to a song or a playlist or start at 100 and count backwards by a difficult number like 17s in order to do that you have to be present oriented so the bottom line is this there are things you can do to manage symptoms and there are things you can do to manage sources and if you do those things you can reduce your anxiety and feel more confident when you speak mini lecture over no this is this is brilliant and one of the things that I pride our our show on

being is taking these really esoteric Concepts and putting some structure in it some actual feedback some things that that listeners can put into practice immediately and people think that that's very difficult with things that are abstract like creativity for example but if you start to peel back the layers it's not dissimilar from communication right communication is this ambiguous thing and if you look at people who are great in the in the book you use examples like Steve Jobs for example Michelle Obama both of whom I've seen speak in person and it's very captivating and having

done things with apple on the Apple stage in Cupertino you start to understand how much practice goes in to that quarterly uh media presentation that they do it's hundreds of hours on the speeches is are are meticulously uh prepared right and tweaked and managed and as you've you know articulated earlier these These are professional speakers and we all want what is the we want to come across as effortlessly brilliant yeah but the reality but the reality of we take our cues from people who are brilliant but they've put in in many cases a lifetime of

work so it just even putting this to light as you have in your book is helpful and if we shift gears and as you've just given us some some tactics there but we want to know what we can do about it so let's let's go one level deeper on some of the advice that you gave us around reducing anxiety let's say in the case of we I do have a friend who asked I shared that we were going to record this morning and she asked me like oh gosh here's my question for your guest and

she said would you ask Matt about turning red because you know I blush yeah and so from a practical perspective yeah you talked about that as managing a symptom okay holding a cold compress yeah is that a thing that you can get when you are able to have a you know something cold in your hand you can then train your body through that particular mechanism and then not you know and getting present and doing some of these other um I'll say hacks but sure no these are just pract practices is that a thing that you

can reduce in the long term the physiological turning red is that if you can start to manage your breath manage your temperature through teaching your body and then um being present is that something that can make that what is perceived by this person who's asking the question as a negative yes uh experience can that can we lessen reduce and even remove that absolutely so the more comfortable we get with anxiety and the management techniques I've talked about and many others that that exist we can actually get to a point where we don't have those manifestations

as much so part of it is practice is giving yourself experiences that let you practice so that it becomes more comfortable doing in executing these anxiety management techniques all of my students in any class I teach any Workshop I do any keynote I encourage people to create what I call an anxiety management plan an amp because I believe in anxiety can actually amp you up and help you and that is again a mindset shift so if you can begin to practice some of these techniques over time it becomes less worrisome and less bothersome you know

I like to use the example of somebody learning to play a musical instrument or an athlete learning a sport how do you get better at it you do a lot of repetition you do a lot of drills and as you do that repetition in drills you get more comfortable and you get more agile at doing it and the same is true with communication the challenge is when we play sports or play music there's an inherent enjoyment out of it many of us dread having to speak or dread communicating so the the incentive to practice is

is harder to overcome it's harder to manage right then hey if I play this music it's fun I enjoy it my friends right so so we have to push ourselves a bit harder but the same mechanism repetition reflection feedback that all helps you become more comfortable and confident so you blush less I blush less now than I used to when I used to speak so it comes with practice it comes with challenging yourself and and just baking it into the way you you are when you communicate let's talk more about the f word your lingo

for the book yeah being focused yeah now I think that that is another one of those terms that you know I've had coaches I used to you know do do athletics at a high level and I can remember coaches saying Focus but just having someone tell you to focus is like someone yelling to calm down calm down you know that doesn't work for you exactly but but and so you know this I understand the concept of Focus right we want to deliver a very clear concise message yeah and most messages that are clear and concise

have been rehearsed not dissimilar to the examples I've given earlier just a moment ago about professional speakers and they have speech writing teams and they just hone like literally every word it doesn't look like that so how do we especially spontaneously how do we focus our communication what how is this another one of those um things that we just have to rehearse because the list of things were yeah it's getting longer it's getting long yeah so help us I think anything that's challenging has many angles and aspects to it so we one of the the

unfortunate situations with communication is we've all been doing it since we were around one so we feel like we should be good at it or it should be natural and normal for us and there's a difference between casual conversation and and formal presenting and and even informal trying to get your points across and and those get conflated and so some of us feel very down on ourselves like I should be able to do this you need to work at things that you want to get good at and and communication is one of those so when

it comes to focus the the biggest mistake people make in their communication is they start from the wrong place they start by thinking about what do I want to say what is it what is it I want to get across and that's the wrong place to start you need to think about what does my audience need to hear which begs the question what's relevant in Salient for them so the first way to make things focused is to put yourself in your audience's perspective it's about being audience Centric because if you can understand what's important to

them you can focus on that and when you focus on that you make it more relevant and you can use fewer words so the first thing is being audience Centric the second thing that helps is to talk about structure again structure by definition helps you be more concise and clear growing up my mother used to impart this to my brother and me and I know she didn't create the saying but it's one that I've I really hear my echoes in my head every time I speak and it's simply tell the time don't build the clock

many of us are clock Builders when we communicate we feel like we have to explain every detail about how we got here artists entrepreneurs it's very common to expect here was my motivation and here's the and that's great information but it might not be the first information you give get people excited about what you're doing and then have an opportunity or take the opportunity to go deeper so really taking the time to focus on your audience remind yourself that that being concise is important and leveraging a structure let me share an example of a structure

I gave you what so what now what earlier anybody pitching who wants to pitch an idea in the shortest amount of time I want you to answer or finish the these four sentence starters what if you could so that for example and that's not all so imagine I was chase you said hey tell me about your podcast you've got this podcast what's your podcast about tell me so here's my pitch using those sentence starters what if you could learn important valuable immediately useful communication skills so that you could improve how you come across in any

situation be it a pitch a presentation a conversation for example you'll learn skills about how to manage anxiety as well as how to be engaging and that's not all you'll hear from industry-leading experts and Stanford professors to learn the latest and greatest communication tools do you see how just answering those four prompts what if you could so that for example and that's not all you have a concise clear pitch so it's about focusing on your audience what's important to them it's about reminding yourself I gotta be tight in what I say and it's about leveraging

structure if you do that you can be more clear concise and you can avoid or you can achieve the f word which is focus I love it the structure your your the answers have an amazing structure to them as well it's clear that you're a professional I'm leveraging a structure by the way when I answer my questions I am I am absolutely following a structure in my mind yes I I see it yeah it's beautiful um all right I'm gonna shift gears now I want to I'm gonna I would say I'm even dramatically shift gears

because let's go to let's get let's we're gonna go on the inside here we're gonna go behind the curtain oh and we're gonna say like okay there's all this structure yeah I I I am adopting these techniques I mean especially that last one that you know answering these four questions is the tightest way that you could possibly pitch an idea yes but let's we're at a mixer now we're we are um where there's a a networking event or we're getting together with a bunch of other artists and notoriously artists are not that great at communicating

about their ideas and you know you're standing at the bar next to someone and let's just be real how what a large part of our culture is occupied by small talk yes and you know the saying goes people get tired of small talk or I I no longer do small talk so I don't go out and we also know that not going out not socializing and I like to use the c word community community yes like building Community is really helpful for spreading ideas for connecting with others and on a human level we are social

animals whether we like it or not and you could you know classify yourself as an introvert or an extrovert and that doesn't matter and all of that can be true and there's still a bunch of small talk and you have articulated a way for us to think about it such that we can be successful there even if it's something we dread or how we can decide through a mindset shift yeah to to embrace the what what maybe even I'll say some of the benefits of small talk or how can we get good at it such

that we can break through and actually have deeper more meaningful conversations and connect with other people around our work our lives our Humanity whatever help us what's the big thing on small talk so first and foremost I 100 agree with you chase that it is Small Talk is actually very helpful it's very instructive it's it's it's a wonderful opportunity to connect to collaborate to learn again it's a reframe many of us see it as arduous and and difficult and we make it more difficult for ourselves so let me make some suggestions uh first we feel

a great pressure in small talk to to have something important and witty to say in many ways we have a mental model of small talk is playing a tennis match where I lob something over at you and I want it to hit really well and it's less about you serving it back to me it's more about me hitting the spot I would rather people replace that that analogy with one of hacky sack you remember the game hacky sack where you all stand in a circle and the goal is just to keep the ball up and

y'all your job is just to keep it going from one person to the next and if you go into small talk thinking hey my job here is just to keep the conversation going rather than giving some glowing really important piece of information then it can you can help um it's it's really important that you focus on the other person asking questions is a great way to engage in small talk so the what so what now what structure I mentioned a while back you can actually just literally leverage those questions so if you and I found

ourselves at a networking event I can come up to you and I could just say hey Chase what brings you here that's the what you could answer hey I like these people or this artist is really one I say oh so so what is it you find interesting in the artwork of the and that's my so what and you answer the question and then I can say oh so are you going to see the artwork elsewhere have you considered looking at this other artist who's similar so all of a sudden all I'm doing is asking

you what so what now what they're open questions they're inviting gives you a free easy way to talk and I might learn something about you I might learn you and I like exactly the same kind of art and we have a connection and then all of a sudden maybe we can collaborate on something so small talk through using questions can be really really helpful so envisioning it as a hacky sack where all of us are involved my whole goal is just to keep it going it's not to say something wonderfully amazing and then second it's

really about setting up conversation by asking open questions those are those are key ingredients that can help you be very successful in the moment there is a part in the book that I'm remembering um I'll try and find a page number while you're while you're articulating your point here that the similar levels of disclosure yes like you're like oh you're talking yeah we're at uh I don't know an art opening or something and you're making small talk or something about this piece here in front of and then someone else in the middle of that uh

you know you're talking your small talk about the the show opening or the artists or the painting before you and your the person you're talking to says something that is you know I have cancer oh my yeah for example and I'm trying to think of an extreme example yeah and how ought we think about that from both sides of the equation like as the sharer of that information when we clearly are in a tough place and we right we are looking for something meaningful to bond over but what we're really there to talk about or

we're at an art opening right right you know we're at a photography show yeah so and then so if you're that person who's sharing and seeking to connect on a deeper level because small Talk's not your thing so I want to hear about it from that angle and then from the other angle if you're the receiver of this information how what are some ways to and I'm trying to set up a situation which is a little extreme but that is actually practical because yes you know these are social situations that if you can navigate them

elegantly I think both help you yeah you know understand that that you can perform well spot and spontaneously on your feet and these are good tools to have for social convention absolutely and so what's underlying your question is is this notion of Mutual disclosure so in revealing information about ourselves there's an expectation that people will do two things one share information that is equivalent in nature and two as a conversation progresses there tends to be a tendency to get deeper disclosure what you've just described is where somebody sort of jumps ahead of the line right

goes goes deep quickly right and sometimes that can happen for for Myriad reasons if somebody has a medical diagnosis and it's really present in their mind they that might be what's front and center and that's what they're going to share it might give them a sense of uh relief that they have some secret here or something that's influencing their behavior and they just want to get it out so people know so there are many reasons that people might over disclose if you're in that situation and you receive it I think first and foremost you need

to acknowledge it to ignore it is is just rude I think and and awkward so you can acknowledge it in a couple ways you could Express gratitude you could say thanks for feeling comfortable sharing that with me uh if it's something negative you could express concern I'm sorry to hear that I I hope you're under proper treatment um and then fundamental to all small talk are two choices you have in response academics call them supporting or shifting responses a supporting response is a response that asks people to go deeper a shifting response is a response

that changes the topic let me give a more generic example so people can understand and we'll come back to your situation let's imagine chase you and I are talking and you say hey Matt I'm super excited I just got back from my trip to Hawaii and had a great time I could ask have a supporting response and I could say oh that's so cool what islands did you visit what did you do that made you so excited or I could do a shifting response and said oh that's cool I just got back from Costa Rica

and we had a great time too do you see how one takes the attention away from you brings it to me the other encourages you to go deeper it turns out when people study this what is deemed effective or good small talk is to have slightly more supporting responses than shifting responses so think of it as two-thirds to three-quarters of your responses should be supportive and one-third to a quarter should be shifting and that's what makes for good conversation we don't want to always make it about ourselves so we don't always want to be shifting

back to ourselves but we also don't want to always deflect and just do supporting responses so we never share anything about ourselves we need to find that balance and part of that's what we're comfortable with and what we think the other person would like so going back to your situation I think the immediate response needs to be supporting and maybe a couple responses after that need to be supporting before you would shift away you know if somebody says oh I've got cancer and it's awful and you say oh my mother you know and all of

a sudden you're like whoa what is that right so being supportive and then shifting so going in again with some guidelines these are structures these are rules that can help you they're flexible rules but you're not at a loss you know I love to use this example of jazz music or improvisation people Hear jazz or people see people do improv and they think oh they're just free form they're just doing whatever they want they're not they're following very very defined rules in improv there's a rule yes and I know if you and I are doing

an improv skit you are always going to accept what I say I'm going to say hey Grandma and you're going to become Grandma you're not going to say I'm Grandpa no uh Jazz musicians they play certain Melodies and certain chord progressions so going into small talk even if you have a very extreme example like you said by following some of these rules support then shift validate Express gratitude and concern that helps you get through these tough situations there's you know as I was peeling back the layers of your work I became more aware that there

are um so many of these things in our culture that I go back to this concept of effortless Brilliance we all want to appear to not have tried and be brilliant at whatever it is that we do and I'm trying to shift that for myself I want to you know I'm fine disclosing that this is something I've worked on whether this is my photography or writing a books or whatever and and yet there's still something very seductive and one of the things that uh made me want to ask uh you about this this particular question

is I would love to be effortlessly brilliant at the wedding that I'm going to attend this weekend or I will or I will need to toast the bride and the groom and there is a section in your book yeah again the book's title is think faster talk smarter uh advise me pretend I haven't read the book and for the benefit of our listeners yes I'm gonna have to give a toast to Tyson and Aubry uh this weekend well first congratulations to Tyson and Aubry that's fantastic um and and so I end every quarter when I

teach at the business school I teach the same class twice a quarter every quarter on strategic communication the very last activity my students do is give a toast giving a toast or a tribute is the most frequent public speaking event that most people do if you're not an entrepreneur if you're not a performer you're not an artist most of us give toasts and tributes much more frequently so again I believe First it has to do with mindset a toaster attribute is a gift you are giving and if you think of it as a gift what

makes for a good gift well it's appropriate for the person it's it's packaged nicely it's something that they can determine right away and quickly why it's important and relevant to them so your your toasts have to be the same we have all witnessed awful toast the very first thing I ask my students before we do the toasting activity is I say give me an example what's happened that's made toasts go bad and I see you I mean what what have you seen happen when toasts go bad what are some things you've noticed what have you

had happen they are so long exactly no no one in the room has any idea what this person's talking about right I mean I I have been to some that are worthy of a like something you'd see in like a hangover yeah exactly just like right so so bad and where people are literally if at some point we're like you know literally not even kidding 20 minutes oh my goodness people people are leaving there's a nice tent all these people sitting down dining people are leaving yeah people are like just get it's just yeah and

it's getting it's awkward and they're saying really uh you know not necessarily kind thing right right it becomes a roast not a toast or it becomes more about the person giving the toast than the person took right we've all seen that speaking with this right now I'm it's making me I know I've seen no I've seen people might not be able to see it but I mean clearly you're having a visceral reaction to this yeah it can be awful so let me help first and foremost avoid any supplementation before you do it right so some

people say I'm gonna I'll have a switch quick or something and it's gonna be no no don't do that bad call I have a structure you again I sound like a broken record for those of your listeners who remember what records were uh repeating the same thing but structure can help and I have a four-step structure to giving a good toast and the structure is simple it's the word what w-h-a-t okay the first part of the toast is why are we here so when you start the toast explain why we're here now sometimes you can

go into this in detail sometimes you don't need to if I'm a product manager and we're at a product team meeting and everybody knows that I don't have to say and we're here at the product team meeting but you might for this wedding where you're speaking you might you might give some context you might say you know after five years it is so wonderful to finally come together to celebrate the right so you might give some context there so that's that's the why are we here um the next part is you have to explain how

you are connected to the event again if you're the product manager at a product team release where you're giving a toast or a tribute to the team you don't have to say I'm the product manager everybody knows that but it the wedding you're giving people might not know how you're connected to the bride or the groom so it's important to say I've known the groom for 20 years so you you first accept the context that's the why are we here then then how are you connected then give one or two short relevant easily accessible anecdotes

that's what the a stands for an anecdote or two not too many but one or two that really represent something meaningful and then finally there's some kind of thanks tribute or toast at the end that's what the T stands for so you might say cheers you might say everybody raise a glass and wish this couple's success in the future so it's why are we here how are you connected relevant concise clear anecdotes and then the toast Banks or tribute at the end and you're done so that frames what you're saying it helps gives you a

place to start and can help you then focus on the words you say rather than the flow that you have for it so I'm hoping that that can be of help you to help to you chase and in fact in the book as you when you read it you probably saw I actually spell out examples so people can see what it would sound like because that can really help people have a template to use Chandra I think you went yeah exactly yeah yeah Chandra that's right that's right um I will I confess like I actually

really enjoy it because I do look at it as a gift yeah and um and public speaking is something that I have been able to embrace over time this is one of the reasons that your work is very seductive to me because I'm like why do I like this what and of course also knowing that I have lots of room to improve right and so I want to take that as a little framework for for thinking about putting ourselves into our listeners Minds for a moment so there are let's just for simplification let's just say

there are two groups there are people who historically do not like the fact that they have to think fast and talk smart this is the group that are going maybe in the Peter Thiel example from zero to one they're they are non - they don't they they think of themselves as not great communicators and I don't I don't really want to get better but I I know I have to so there's two groups there's the zero to one group I'm going to start to learn these techniques that Matt's talking about and then there are the

groups who are they dabble or they're interested or curious or they know they're gregarious or talkative or they want to you know they stand on stages and want to say even dare I say master so to go from say one to ten yeah so let's Zoom way out here for a second and say there's these two groups that you're speaking to in order to let's let's what's your pitch for the zero to one crew on hey look this is not only is it valuable but it's critical to you cultivating I would not just not the

success but fulfillment in your life being able to communicate what's your what's your zero to one for people who do not hold themselves in high esteem around this even as an area of Interest let alone right of value so let's I'd love to hear that Orient us there sure and and I I deal with a lot of folks like this my students the people I coach the the people in my my Social Circles so I believe a very powerful tool to practice what I teach and preach around making things audience relevant that is to to

ask questions I believe a lot in what I call time traveling language I like to I can I can move you into the past or into the future through the words I use so I could say if I were coming to somebody who's dubious about the importance of communication or a little resistant hesitant because of anxiety I might say think back to a time where you had something really important to get across and it didn't go well for you how did that feel what were some of the results of that or and then I say

what if you could so I take somebody from the past now into the future what if you could go back and communicate effectively your point what might have happened so by getting people to actually take something that was very real for them that either resulted in a negative result or a missed opportunity helps them understand all the sudden that hey it would have been better had I been able to do things and then I would make the case that dedicating time to working on communication can help you realize some of those benefits and things that

you were looking forward to so that opportunity could be realized and that often I find is compelling to people because I've contextualized it in something that's important and relevant to them and that's where I start and then from there you incrementally talk about things people could do and and how it's baby steps it's not like a light switch you don't study communication all of a sudden become amazing it's it's baby steps and if people see that gradual nature is more inviting and more possible for them love it let's talk now about the group that they

fancied themselves uh an amateur and they would like to become an expert right and or they are they are in a new job they just become a project manager or sorry a project uh lead and they are aware that communicating their vision and speaking in a compelling way that's going to excite and motivate and Inspire others say in a leadership position um or even just at the family like how do you get your family excited yeah about um you know the the trip that you're going to take uh or the responsibilities that everyone's going to

share and building a household like they're there are people who communicate and and how to how would you sell them on the idea of let's go let's take this to 11. yeah so I was totally with you until you threw the family thing in because I'm still working on that it's a there's a big irony that that I teach all this stuff and then I have two teenagers and then it's like a brick wall so I I I'm humbled constantly uh but so I another technique just like I talked about using time traveling language for

the the folks who who are going from zero to one I would use another technique I would use analogy so if I'm talking to somebody like you who's a very gifted communicator but still wants to up your game I would use analogies I would say share with me somebody who you think is a really good communicator what are some of the things you notice they do what are some of the things they achieve through their communication and by getting you to highlight that uh talk about things that you could do again perhaps using analogies like

you know you shared that you were an athlete you've done some Athletics well how did you get better what did you do where did you focus did you have a coach did you do a lot of reflection you know so using analogies I find help move people from or inspire people to move from where they are to where they would like to be so I'm a big fan of using analogies and asking questions to get people to share with me their own analogies and that can be really helpful what I am envisioning as I'm thinking

about the Frameworks that you've shared you know here on the show and in the book and on your podcast frankly we won't talk about that in a second but the the core thing to me is like I'm thinking of this in two separate buckets right there is the professional stage either Chase or listener who is you know they have to you know present to their boss at work or do their Partners at the firm or you know work to investors or whatever and then there's the again the subhead of think faster talk smarter is how

to speak successfully when you're put on the spot and that's the Improv piece yeah so we with all the structure that you've given us and these are ways to sort of practice or these are the things that you would organize your thoughts prior to being put in the space so you can limit your anxiety and some of the other things that we talked about sure symptoms and the sources let's like how do we really get good at this it's sort of like how do you get good at improv comedy how do you how do you

get good if you can truly only practice or the best practices when you're actually on the spot there's stakes and there's consequences like what's the framework or what's the thinking around how do we get good at that okay I understand I can be in a dark room and I can study the four steps and come up with my come come up with my answer before I go to the trade show and have to introduce myself 500 times like I can have a little can thing that I rehearse yeah yeah yes but it's not quite like

doing it on the spot because there are low stakes when you're by yourself looking in the bathroom mirror yeah so let's go to the put on the spot part yeah so so much of our communication is that way uh people ask us questions people ask us for feedback we make a mistake we have to correct it so a lot of our communication is what you're describing but I would argue most Communication in general is spontaneous I mean you you didn't wake up this morning and script out everything you were going to say and so realizing

that we are already doing this and most of us get through our days pretty well doing it so it's not this esoteric thing that's out there it's we're doing it but we can focus on it especially when it becomes higher Stakes there are ways to practice it so sometimes it's by practicing complementary activities so maybe you take an improvisation class if you join Toastmasters and I am a big proponent of Toastmasters part of what they do in Toastmasters meetings is spontaneous speaking they call it table topics so they're venues you can put yourself in that

get you to stretch those muscles and use them so that's that's one way to do it another way is to deliberately seek out low stakes situations where you can try things out so for example if you have an important job interview coming up use generative AI I'm still not sure where I fall on this generative AI I think it's got valuable help but I think it can bring some problems but you can you can type in degenerative AI you know chat GPT or Bard or something and you type in give me three interview questions for

a project manager job at company X and it's going to give you three questions and as soon as you see one practice answering it go into a meeting that is low stakes for you and practice speaking up more or giving feedback in those situations you know athletes to get better practice their sport in their sport they do scrimmages they they lightly you know practice with other people that's the way you do it you you're right you can read a book you can learn all these Frameworks But ultimately the rubber has to meet the road at

some point and you need to put yourself in situations where there are low stakes where you can try this stuff out and ban you can begin to build that confidence to do it in the higher Stakes situations love it love it and I'm a big fan of that there's like how do you I'll just use golf oh yeah you can stand there on the driving range and you can hit golf ball after golf ball on this perfect little pad of grass with the little fan blowing above your head and you know and and then you

can go out on the real Golf Course right and there's no no such thing as a flat lie yeah grass is imperfect the wind is blowing and when those situations arise and it's so different from what you've practiced there's a there's a paralysis for most and yeah you know the way they resolve that in golf is by playing a lot of actual golf that's right and this is like the low stakes um situations you picked Golf and I'm I'm horrific at golf all my friends say hey let's go play golf it'll be great we'll talk

a lot I never see them because I'm always in the rough and they're going straight down but but I've been a martial artist for years and my instructor my Sensei whenever I bring up you know should I do this should I do that he'll just he'll just throw a punch and he'll say did it work you know so at some point you know yeah you just you just have to do it right you can rationalize it you can think about it but you just have to do it at some point but you do it in

a prepared way you don't just throw yourself in the deep end you use the mindset shifts you use the structures you gradually get into it but ultimately to get better at it you have to do it yeah that's the all right there's you're you're putting yourself in that situation where the stakes aren't low right and you get comfortable with that and then you elevate the stage okay that's that's that's helpful um the last area that I am really fascinated by yeah is creative processes in general so you have again we've been talking about your new

book yeah think faster talk smarter how to speak successively when you're put on the spot yeah first of all congratulations thank you it's been amazing I was fortunate enough to get an early copy and that's part of how we're having this conversation today about your work but you also have a popular podcast as you mentioned earlier on the show somewhere toward the beginning you've had other guests like huberman and other Stanford professors what was the process that you went through to get to the book because we're really yeah you know we're talking about the book

but there's a whole host of research so I'm always fascinated to understand a little bit more like the podcast clearly played a role and plays it you know continues to play a role um just try that out for us so since again this is a podcast largely about creativity yeah fascinated by the process of our artists across all sorts of different disciplines what how did you come up with the book and how has the podcast been related and then we can uh I'd love to have you share some coordinates for some other stuff on the

internet where people can find you and the podcast and whatnot thank you I appreciate the opportunity and they are all related so I am somebody who's fundamentally very curious about and passionate about communication and I have always looked for ways to improve my communication and help others hone and develop theirs and at Stanford's business school they too uh one of our big core tenants is innovation disruption Etc so I was approached in January of 2020 to take some of the lectures and videos I had done around campus uh and and you know online and and

I was asked hey do you want to experiment with a podcast because the business school had not never really had a podcast in January 2020 it was it's important that I show that those coordinates because clearly right before the pandemic right yeah and so so we we released five episodes on effective communication that's all we explore and then the pandemic hit and everybody realized oh my goodness communication has changed fundamentally and how do we do it and we need to learn so we were in the right place at the right time and that's you know

a lot of creativity I mean you as an entrepreneur yeah a lot of success has to do with luck and Serendipity uh I'm not saying that the pandemic was a good thing but the pandemic helped the pot a fledgling podcast on on communication so we the other thing that helped us is we were very open to to feedback uh we in fact thought we were creating the podcast is called think fast talk smart you can see I'm not that creative with names um and uh we we thought we were creating a business podcast the market

after we would listen to people talk to people said no you're creating a careers podcast you're helping people hone and develop their careers so one of the things that helps I think in creativity is being audience focused listening being in the right place at the right time and adjusting and adapting following the success of the podcast and the fact that people were finding value a logical Next Step was to codify some of the things that are talked about the podcast especially around this notion of spontaneous speaking not surprising to you I'm sure Chase creativity is

one of the most popular topics on the podcast we Stanford is known for design thinking how do you communicate Creative Concepts how do you pitch those are some of our most popular topics and the question of how do you do that in the moment is the most popular of our topics so it was a natural next step to codify things I'd done things that we'd learned on the podcast into a book so the creativity again was being open receptive audience focused but leading Us in in a direction of being able to just find other avenues

to help people that's how I originally was acquainted with your work through Sarah Stein green yes exactly at Stanford yeah who wrote the book creative action various people yep and so I approach yeah this topic your book your podcast and I just say your body of work through the lens of creativity as such a valuable you know there's that's what you know creative communication or communication is largely a career oh absolutely you can you know when people say I will say creativity is everywhere and they'll say well what do you mean I'm like we're co-creating

this conversation right now because if you if you said I'm done here yeah you can quickly end the conversation right just so if you're wondering if you're co-creating something you just have to think about can I affect the outcome of what happens next and right turns out you are and so this ability to communicate you know to to do so with the flourish like some of the examples that that uh we've talked about on the show jobs and Michelle Obama for example or or there's so many examples that you've given in the book and on

the podcast like that is it is seductive there is in whether it's Charisma or this probably what it really is is Confluence of a little bit of mindset and a lot of practice yeah yeah um that I think there's room for us all to be able to communicate in our own way too that's another thing about what I I was um inspired by this there's not necessarily um prescription that applies to everyone in your work right there's the the variety the taking things that are interesting to you you mentioned being curious about you so I

wanted to let you know that I really appreciate how you've approached the work um that you've packaged it in a couple different formats for us to enjoy and uh and I want to say thank you before we before we uh I guess call it a show is there anywhere you'd like to direct our audience besides of course the book think faster talk smarter podcasts we've shared about anything else that you'd like us to know about before we go so that we can support you and your work and learn more because I know there's a lot

of communication turns out is pretty popular topic on our show as well yeah where else would you steer us yeah so well first and foremost thank you I am so glad that Sarah uh introduced us Sarah's a dear friend and and her work is really fascinating uh and thank you uh think faster talk smarter is the book think fast talk smart is the podcast and and to find me I'm a big user of LinkedIn people on LinkedIn can connect with me and check out my website mattabrahams.com lots of resources there lots of videos and tips

and tricks to help you become more comfortable confident and compelling speaking planned or spontaneous awesome thank you so much for being a guest on the show and to everybody out in the world I hope that you have taken away a handful of these Frameworks highly recommend the book uh and the show of course it's fun to hear y'all talk about this stuff with other super smart people that's one of my podcasting uh I just had a long uh four and a half hour drive yesterday it was very very fun to listen to the show um

but again from Matt and myself I hope today's episode's been super valuable and uh until next time we both bid you