Think Faster, Talk Smarter with Matt Abrahams

raise your hand if you have recently had to introduce yourself or make small talk yes that is what today is all about how to speak better in the moment my hunch is for many of you introducing yourselves and making small talk at some points was challenging it's awkward it can be uncomfortable so today I want to talk about how we can think faster and talk smarter in those moments where we're put on the spot to think and act quickly we all know that speaking in planned situations presentations pitches meetings with agendas can be hard but

it can be much harder to speak in the moment and if you think about it most of our communication happens in the moment it's things like making a toast answering questions giving feedback introducing yourself answering questions these are the things that can be very challenging for us so today I'd like to walk you through a methodology that I developed in service of needs of our students here at Stanford many years ago the Deans came to me and said we have a problem the problem is this our very bright Stanford MBA students are struggling to answer

those cold call questions from their professors you remember back here when people would say what do you think and you had to respond so I did a deep dive into research in Psychology anthropology sociology improvization neuroscience and came up with a methodology now that all Stanford mbas within the first three weeks of their time here have an opportunity to take and it turns out it helps them feel more comfortable and confident not just answering questions but in standing up in class and giving a position and many other situations that they find themselves in when they

leave here interviewing for jobs giving feedback to employees Etc so today is going to be not just listening to me but it's going to be participative and we're going to start it's not hard some of you looking at each other going oh no what's he going to make me do pretty simple I'd like you all to read this sentence and what's more important to me than the meaning of the sentence is I'd like for you to count the number of FS the letter F how many FS do you find I'll give you three or four

seconds to do it keep the answer quiet to yourself how many FS I wish my MBA students were as quiet and thoughtful as you are right now all right all right raise your hand if you found three FS how many found three excellent very good anybody find four ah anybody found five how about six there are six FS what two-letter word ending in f did many of us Miss so why do I do this activity I have done this in every Workshop every keynote I ever deliver why because this is an exact analogy of what

we're going to be doing here today many of us miss little things that make a big difference in our communication now the other reason I do this is 14 years ago when I first saw this I found three I felt really stupid and I like to pass that that's so we're going to identify little things that make a big difference difference to make us more effective in our spontaneous speaking so I want to introduce you to a six-step methodology that we can use to become better at speaking in the moment and the six steps divide

into two categories mindset and messaging the first step has to do with managing anxiety taming the anxiety Beast most people get nervous speaking in spontaneous situations in fact most people get nervous speaking in any high stake situation we have some research that says upwards of 85% of people feel nervous in high stake situations and I think the other 15% are lying so let me ask you this how do you feel when you watch a nervous speaker present now I know a few of you probably like watching people suffer but most of us don't how does

it feel just shut out how do how do you feel when you see a nervous speaker present okay so uncomfortable empathetic and I heard some people say I actually feel an anxious myself I call that secondhand anxiety so if for no other reason we should learn to manage our anxiety so our audience can focus on us and not be distracted so when it comes to managing anxiety we have to take a two-pronged approach we have to manage both symptoms and sources symptoms are the things that we physiologically experience what goes on in our body and

sources are the things that initiate or exacerbate that anxiety so I'd like i' like to hear from some of you what happens for you when you get nervous when you're put on the spot I'll start I blush and I perspire what happens for some of you my mouth goes mouth goes dry I call this Plumbing reversal what's normally dry gets wet and what's normally wet gets dry so you get sweaty Palms but dry mouth really weird right what else happens my brain goes yeah you freeze you can't remember what to say what else happens please

heart yeah you feel your heart pounding right some of us get shaky these are normal and natural responses to anxiety your body sees speaking in the moment as being under threat and it invokes the fight ORF flight response and these are normal and natural responses but there are things we can do to address these now allow me to share a few with you the first and best thing you can probably do is to take a deep belly breath the kind of breath you would take if you've ever done yoga or or taii or chiong a

deep belly breath and what's interesting is it's the exhale that's more important than the inhale so my rule of thumb or shall I say my rule of lung is you want your exhale to be twice as long as your inhale and if you take two or three of these deep belly breaths you'll actually reduce the rapid heart rate the rapid breathing that causes you to speak faster and you'll feel calmer so before you walk into a room where you think you might be asked for feedback or you know questions are coming or before you unmute

on that Zoom take this deep belly breath and it will help now if you get dry mouth and you know you're going into a situation where you might have to speak in the moment drink some warm water suck on a Loz or chew some gum obviously you don't want to do that while you're in the midst of speaking but that will help reactivate those salivary glands if you're like me and you blush and you perspire hold something cold in the palms of your hand the palms of your hand are Thermo Regulators for your body just

like your forehead or the back of your neck if you've ever had a fever and you put a cold compress on your head to cool down because your heart rate is going up because your body tenses when you're stressed you have more blood going through tighter tubes your blood pressure goes up and that causes you to get hotter it's like you're exercising so we can reduce the sweating and the blushing by cooling ourselves down in fact before I start Ed speaking today I was holding a cold bottle of water to help so these are some

of the things we can do to manage our symtoms of anxiety if I didn't talk about a symptom you have there are resources I'll share at the end of the talk that can help you find ways to manage your anxiety now there's another side too we have to think about sources sources are the things that initiate or exacerbate our anxiety there are many let me talk about one many of us are made nervous by the goal of what we're trying to achieve when we communicate my students want to get a good grade the entrepreneurs I

coach want to get funding you might want to get a new job or you might want to get your project supported so what makes you nervous is the fact that you might not achieve that goal in other words what's making you nervous is a potential negative future outcome so how do we short circuit that we become very present oriented because if you're in the moment by definition you're not worried about the future so how do we get present oriented one way is to do something physical walk around the building before you go in for that

job interview another way is to listen to a song or a playlist just like athletes do you can do what I do I get present oriented by talking to people before I got up here on stage I was talking with many of you that helps me get present oriented I can't engage in a conversation and be thinking about what might go wrong in my presentation or Q&A session start at 100 and count backwards by 17s that'll get you present oriented I know I'm in front of a crowd that's trying the first one's easy 83 the

next one's hard my favorite way to get present oriented is to say tongue twisters you can't say a tongue twister right and not be in the present moment some of you are going uhoh that's right I'm going to ask you to say my favorite tongue twister I said this tongue twister right before I walked out here it warms me up and it gets me present oriented many of us assume that we can just go from Silence to Brilliance without warming up our voices but you know if you've ever played a sport or exercised or played

a musical instrument you should warm up first so let's try it my favorite tongue twister takes 5 Seconds to say has three phrases and if you say one of the phrases wrong you'll say a naughty word so I'm listening to here okay let's try it repeat after me I slit a sheet SL she a sheet I slit a she I slit and on that slitted sheet I sit excellent nobody said that naughty word and I'm sure you all know what it is so by managing our anxiety both symptoms and sources we prepare ourselves to be

better when we speak in the moment the second step in our process has to do with maximizing mediocrity we get in our own way I have the audacity in front of my Stanford MBA students on the first day of class to say maximize mediocrity their jaws drop they've never been told to be mediocre but why do I recommend this it boils down to this we are the biggest impediment to our ability to speak spontaneously in the moment we get in our own way and we do it through all the judging and evaluating that we do

of the material that we're thinking about saying we get in our head here's why this is problematic think of your brain as a computer this is not a Perfect Analogy but for this point it works you know on your laptops or your phones when you have a lot of apps and windows open how the performance of each one of those is a little less good because the others are open that's because the bandwidth is less the same is true with your brain when I am evaluating and judging everything I'm saying as I'm saying it I

have less cognitive bandwidth to focus on what I'm actually saying so when we are evaluating ourselves as we're speaking we're doing ourselves a disservice now be very clear I am not saying you should never judge or evaluate your speaking you should but we can turn the volume down a little bit to give us more resources so we can be more present and be more effective in what we're saying so the true sentence that I tell my students at the end I start with maximize mediocrity and then I end the class by saying maximize mediocrity so

you can achieve greatness if you give yourself permission just to answer the question just to give the feedback just to have the small talk then you put yourself in a position to do it very well but when I say to myself I have to give the right answer the best feedback I need to be the most interesting in small talk it reduces the likelihood that you'll do those well so Step One is manage anxiety step two is turn down that volume on that mental observation and evaluation we're doing and that puts you in a position

to be more present and more engaged the third step of the methodology has to do with the fact that many of us see speaking in the moment and in general as threatening and challenging if I were to tell any of you at the end of the meeting you're running that you're going to get some questions from your audience many of you aren't like oh that's great I can't wait you say oh no I better do a good job I'm afraid they're going to see what I said is wrong they're going to challenge me many of

us see these situations as threatening and challenging and when we do so it impacts not just what we say but how we say it we tend to retreat we make ourselves small our answers are Curt our tone is Harsh because we feel we have to defend there's another way to approach this and before I share with you that way and give you some tools I want you to actually have an experience of it so I'm going to ask you to play a very simple improvisation game with me it's called give a gift all of us

in our lives have had the experience of giving a gift and getting a gift so you know how to play this game but we're going to practice I'd like everybody to take out an imaginary box will you do this with me please here's your imaginary box on the count of three I'd like you to just practice giving it and then give to give the gift you just extend your arms everybody ready 1 2 3 give a gift perfect very good now when you receive a gift you do it in reverse ready 1 two three you've

received a gift perfect so here's what we're going to do in a moment I'm going to ask you to find somebody sitting near you you're simply going to introduce yourself if you don't know and you're going to play the give a gift game one of you will give a gift to your partner your partner will take the imaginary gift open the box look inside look at the partner and say thank you for the and you're going to say the first that pops into your head so you might say thank you for the car thank you

for the pen thank you for the airplane it doesn't even have to fit in the Box your partner who gave you the imaginary gift upon hearing it is going to explain to you why they gave it to you do you see how there are two acts of spontaneity that happen in this activity and then you'll switch so again when it's your turn to give you give the gift your partner receives the gift they open up the box they look inside and they thank you for the first first thing that comes to mind by show of

hands how many of you already know what's in your box ahuh over half of you raised your hands yes remember what I said in the previous step how we want to do well and we want to make sure we're right so you've okay I know there's going to be a dog bone in my box that's perfect I'm done I want you literally when you open up the box to say the first thing that comes to your mind I have to tell my MBA students to keep it clean and keep it legal I'm sure I don't

have to tell you that here but I want you to name it and then your partner upon hearing it is immediately going to explain and then you're going to switch this activity should take 2 minutes I will ask you to come back in about two minutes so find somebody sitting next to you introduce yourself the person who woke up earliest this morning goes first I learned a long time ago as a teacher if you don't say who goes first everybody argues on it all right find a person thank you by the way for doing this

activity I saw lots of of smiles looks like you were having fun I am simply going to move my arm across the audience and as my hand points in your general direction will you just call out what you found in your box I just I love hearing what people gave themselves just start shouting out what you gave yourselves Kleenex tires okay catnip I heard yes pumpkin notes did I hear broccoli oh yes dog poop okay yes sweater excellent you guys gave yourself wonderful gifts it's a bit of a rack test too it tells us a

little bit about you but we won't go there let me ask you this how did it feel when you gave the gift and you were waiting to hear what you gave many of you looked excited I see many of you SM what did I give what did I give and then all of you embraced a rule that comes from improvisation I am a huge fan of improv and I have had wonderful improv teachers here on this campus Patricia Ryan Madson Adam Tobin Dan kleene these are improv experts who've taught me the value of improv and

all of you just executed the number one rule of improv yes and you didn't say I did not give you a dog bone no you said of course I did and here's why right you embraced it right away what if what if when somebody asked you a question or asked you for feedback you saw it as an opportunity just like you saw this activity as an opportunity now I am not naive I know sometimes people when they ask us questions or ask us for feedback they're really putting us on the spot they want to challenge

us they're coming after us but even in those moments if I can see it as an opportunity to connect to learn to find some area of commonality it can change change everything I will step in I will be bigger in my response my tone will be more collaborative my answers will be more detailed by seeing spontaneous communication as an opportunity as a gift not a threat it changes our entire approach so how do we do this how do we execute on it on the new book I wrote thinking faster talking sper I introduce several tools

we can use to see things as opportunities the first comes from this notion of growth mindset which Carol D on this campus helped to develop and champions it's wonderful and her work is fantastic one area of her work in growth mindset which really essentially says that when we are faced with a challenge that doesn't go necessarily the way we want it to we can learn and grow and begin to get better at that versus a fixed mindset which says that's just how we're built that's just the way it is a growth mindset again opens to

opportunity and one aspect of it that I really resonate with is this notion of not yet just because something didn't go the way you want to doesn't mean it never will go the way you want it just means not yet maybe you don't have the skills you don't have the practice but it means you can get there so by adopting a not yet mindset it helps us see things as opportun unties opportunities to learn opportunities to grow so when you meet with a frustration in your life especially around communication say to yourself not yet we've

already talked about yes and yes and is where we see the possibility of connection so even if you're in disagreement in a negotiation that's happening in the moment you can look for those areas of commonality where is it that we agree where is the yes and from there build the third of these comes from the world of basketball many of you are familiar with Mike Shashi former basketball coach Coach K one of the things he has credited with instilling in his players but in all of sport is this notion of next play if you're an

athlete say a basketball player and you miss a shot instead of ruminating and getting frustrated with yourself move on to the next play because the reality is if I miss my shot and I sit there thinking about how bad it was how I should have made it the play is already ensuing and the other team might be scoring a shot I have to move to next play and the same is true when you're in the midst of a conversation Small Talk feedback situation if something happens that doesn't go exactly the way you want it to

next play keep moving now while rumination in the moment is bad reflection after the fact is very good so I'd love for you in the moment to move to the next play but later that day reflect what worked and what didn't many of us treat our communication as that definition of insanity you know doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results if you don't reflect and learn and think about it you're not going to change so in the moment next play later in the day reflection and then the final of these steps

has us reframing the way we think about mistakes many of us try to avoid mistakes we feel a mistake is a bad thing now if you think about it we learn through mistakes if you watch kids as they develop they make lots of mistakes and that's how they learn we can take benefit from that as well but we have to look at them differently rather than mistakes I'd like you to think of them as missed takes you know in television and film directors will have their actors do multiple takes of the same scene you've seen

that clapboard that says take one take two no one scene is wrong they're just trying to optimize and try different things so when you do something that doesn't go the way you want think to yourself take two I'm just going to do it again differently it wasn't bad it wasn't wrong I'm just going to try it differently and if you take that approach to your actions and the things that don't go the way you want one it keeps you in a much more positive frame of reference and it encourages you to think and learn learn

from what just happened so these four tools not yet yes and next play and missed takes are the ways in which we can look at our communication in the moment as opportunities and not threats so we get out of our own way after we manage anxiety we see things as being opportunities not threats and then our fourth step has to do with listening most most of us are not good listeners we listen just enough to get the gist of what somebody is saying and then start thinking judging evaluating rehearsing what we want to say we

don't listen deeply and if you don't listen deeply when you're communicating in the moment you can make some errors imagine this we walk out of a meeting together you turn to me and you say how do you think that went I hear feedback and I start listing all the things that we did wrong all the things you could have done better how we can make sure that we don't make the same errors next time but had I really listened in that moment I might have noticed you came out the back door not the front door

you were looking down and talking more quietly than you usually do in that moment what you wanted was not feedback but you wanted support and by virtue of giving you all this constructive feedback I actually did you a disservice and might have damage the relationship we have so we need to listen in a very different way when we have have to speak spontaneously so we really understand what's needed in the moment so I'd like to give you some advice about how to listen better and I have to caveat this that my wife gets really upset

when I teach listening because she says I'm still a work in progress so listen to what I say not necessarily what I do first when you are listening you need to listen intently I heard a professor at another University say he was he he was a he taught music and he was talking about jazz and he had a jazz teacher and I have to look this guy up to get his name but he said we need to listen until you sweat and I love that approach we listening is hard work so the first thing we

need to do is when somebody's speaking we have to listen to what's the bottom line of what they're saying what's the Crux of what they're trying to get across and then second we need to employ a strategy that I learned from a colleague here his name is Collins dobs and Collins teaches critical and crucial conversations here at the business school and he has a methodology to help do that and that methodology applies beautifully to listening it's three things Pace space Grace to listen well you have to give yourself a little bit of each of those

we have to slow things down the world moves very quickly we've got a lot going on if I slow down I can listen better so the first step is to slow things down second you have to give yourself space sometimes it's physical space move to a location where you can actually hear better as I get older everything is louder in the Ambient sound move to a place where you can actually hear but also mental space give yourself permission to be present oriented In This Moment listening to this person and then finally grace and grace is

to give yourself permission to pay attention to what's going on in the environment how the person says what they say not just what they say and Grace refers to listening to your own intuition We Have Heard lots of things we have seen lots of things in our lives and we get intuitions that come to us based on what we hear and respect those as well we often think listening is only what's coming in but you can also listen to what's happening inside you so but with a little bit of pace space and Grace and focusing

on the Crux of what somebody is saying you can listen better one of the best tools we can use to listen better is to ask either clarifying questions or to paraphrase we have this notion that we have to respond in the moment right away if I don't respond right away it means I'm not confident it means I don't know my stuff and yet we can pause a bit to actually reflect on what we're listening to before we respond so I can literally just take a pause some of us feel pausing is bad but pausing can

be great I can ask a clarifying question that gives me a little bit of time or I can paraphrase which is where I take something you've said synthesize it and present it back to you in a way that's distilled down so it's not like what a 5-year-old does who just parrots back what you say that's annoying but you look for the key idea and you repeat it back the thing with asking follow-up questions and paraphrasing is these are lower order cognitive skills in other words I can be thinking about what I want to say next

while I'm doing those so we're going to do a paraphrasing activity it's very quick very similar to what we did with give a gift I in a moment I'm going to ask you to find a different partner in the room and I'm going to ask you to share a story of your name and it can be anything related to your name you want it can be very deep and meaningful it can be fun for 30 seconds you're going to tell a story of your name this activity is not about storytelling this activity is about paraphrasing

because the person you're telling it to is is going to paraphrase what you said and then they're going to ask a question because paraphrasing never happens by itself it's always followed by something maybe your answer maybe connecting to the agenda maybe asking a question so let me give you an example of what this is like so I'm going to tell you a story about my name for 30 seconds I'm going to ask for a volunteer if you'd like to paraphrase what I said and then another volunteer to ask a question now you do not need

to answer the question but by training yourself to ask a question immediately after paraphrasing you're training yourself to keep the conversation moving paraphrasing is never something you do in and of itself you always use it to move on so here's a story of my name my name is Matt all through my childhood I was teased mercilessly because Matt rhymes with everything okay lazy as a doormat silly as a cat you're fat I was teased all the time when my wife and I started our family it was very important to me that our children not be

named something that was easily teas as a teacher I have a built-in focus group so I went into my classroom I wrote the three names that my wife and I were willing to call our kids and I gave my students five minutes to come up with the most heinous mean bad Rhymes and everything they could and we named my children the names that had the shortest lists so that's the story of my name is there somebody here who' be willing to just paraphrase my story again a paraphrase gets to the Crux of it I see

your hand here sir yes that wouldn't happen excellent great paraphrase essentially what he said for those of you who couldn't hear is you stress tested your kids names right that's a great paraphrase what is a reasonable question that you might ask yes what are the kids' names yes I'm not going to tell you because they would be be very upset but I'll tell you that my kids are not teased because of their names now they're teased for lots of other things but not their names do you see how paraphrasing can actually help you listen more

intently so here's what I'm going to ask you to do find somebody else sitting around you introduce yourself and the person in your partnership who had to travel the farthest to get to campus for the event not this morning if you're not local you're staying in a hotel that's close by but where you came from whoever traveled the farthest will go first you'll tell a 30second story about your name your partner will immediately paraphrase and ask a question you need not answer it and then you'll switch this should take us two minutes to do find

a partner tell a story of your name how did it feel to have your story paraphrased it feels good doesn't it it feels good to have your story paraphrased it feels good to be listened to now we're not virtual in this room so we don't have some of those cool features that you have on tools like zoom and teams and meet so we're going to do it all the oldfashioned way will everybody put your fist out like this this is a yes thumbs up yes thumbs down no no middle fingers did your partner paraphrase well

your story of your name I am seeing almost exclusively thumbs up I see one sideways and we might have one thumbs down but there's always one in every credit no how did it feel how did it feel to listen to paraphrase how did it feel to do this hard right I see thumbs up but it was hard right you had to listen in a different way when I looked at all of you doing this you were leaning in you were nodding it was clear that you were listening with intensity we have the capability to listen

well but we have to encourage ourselves to do it and when we speak spontaneously it is critical to listen well so we've now completed the first four steps of the process manage anxiety get out of Our Own Way see it as an opportunity listen well all of this has to do with mindset we haven't actually responded in the moment yet so that's the next part and that's messaging and messaging has two components first it has to do with structure structure is critical how you put your messages together matters most of us just ramble and give

lists of information when we're put on the spot and your brain is not wired for lists it's very hard for us to remember just ramblings our brains are actually wired for structure for story a story to me a stru structure is nothing more than a logical connection of ideas that has a beginning a middle and an end I learned the power of story and the power of structure When I Was An undergraduate here at Stanford many many years ago I was a tour guide on this campus to this day I can still walk backwards in

a straight line while speaking they trained us back then for 12 weeks the most important thing they taught us they said above all else to be a good tour guide on this campus you must never ever lose your tour group you are a bad tour guide if you get people lost the same is true with us as spontaneous speakers never lose the audience you're talking to how do we keep people together we structure our responses structure helps us Orient people in set expectations if I showed up and I said hi I'm Matt I'm your tour

guide let's go how many of you would go with me a few because you're adventurous but the rest of you'd be like heck no where are we going do I have the right shoes on should I go to the bathroom first a good tour guide just like a good spontaneous speaker sets expectations up front so you can pay attention to what's happening and not wonder what's coming next structure also helps connect ideas together the biggest place or the most frequent place you will lose people as a tour guide is when you move from one place

to the next people just wander off the same is true in our communication if you are using words like so next second third as your transitions then you are missing opportunities to keep people together so structure is really important let me give you an example of a structure just so you can get your arms around it most of us are familiar with a very persuasive structure of problem solution benefit if you've ever ever pitched an idea if you've ever watched an advertisement This Is How They Go problem solution benefit here's an issue here's how we

solve it and here's the benefit that's a structure beginning middle and an end now my favorite structure in the whole world is three simple questions what so what now what the what is your idea your belief your position your product your service your feedback the so is why is it important to the person you're speaking to and then now what is what comes next maybe I'll take your questions let's set another meeting let me show you a demonstration what so what now what is a great way to package up information when you're meeting with your

friends this weekend and somebody says what are you up to it's a great structure to update here's what I'm doing here's why I think it's important here's what I'm planning to do next when you're giving feedback you can give feedback in this structure the feedback is what I saw or what I didn't see the so what is why it's important and the now what is what I'd like you to do differently so imagine we come out of a meeting together and you say Matt how'd that go I say well I thought it went really well

except when you were talking about the implementation plan you spoke quickly and didn't give as much detail as you did elsewhere when you speak quickly without a lot of detail people might think you're nervous and arn is prepared next time slow down and use these two addition examples do you see how in the moment just by following this structure it gives me a good response structure is a tool it's like a recipe I am a lousy cook but I have have a much better chance of cooking well if I follow a recipe so by having

a recipe all I have to do is put the ingredients into it I know how I'm going to give you my feedback I just have to think about what I say in the feedback so structure helps you not only package up information for your audience but it helps you prioritize what to say and because the information is packaged well your audience can take that information and share it elsewhere think of a job interview when you're being interviewed not only are you trying to communicate your skills and how you could benefit the company but you're trying

to equip your interviewer with the information that they can then take to the others involved in the hiring decision and represent you and if you package up that information easily they can tell your story really well if you just give them a whole list of information they're likely not to remember it so structure is incredibly helpful in spontaneous communication in the new book the whole second half of it is specific spontaneous situations making small talk apologizing giving feedback introducing yourself answering questions and with each one I assign or give a structure that you can use

this is not the final step though the final step is the F-word of communication and it's not that naughty one some of you are thinking about it's Focus many of us when we speak in the moment take our audiences on the Journey of our discovery of what it is we want to say as we're saying it in other words we say more than we need to we need to be focused and concise my mother has a saying that I love I know she didn't create it but it's tell me the time don't build me the

clock many of us when we are spontaneously speaking build clocks one because we're discovering what we want to say two because we want people to think we're really smart and three we want everybody to see how hard we've worked to get to what we're saying it is much better to be Compact and concise in what you're saying so how do you do that well one we've already talked about relevance if I think about what's really relevant for the audience then I hinge everything I'm saying on that relevance second you should have a goal whenever you

speak be it spontaneous or planned a goal to me has three parts information emotion and action what do I want the audience to know how do I want them to feel and what do I want them to do so if I'm walking into a room where I expect that I will be asked questions or asked to give feedback or even making small talk I think to myself what do I want people to know how do I want them to feel and what do I want them to do and that helps me focus and prioritize what

I'm saying so it's not enough to just have a structured message you have to focus that message to help people remember it and to not be seen as rambling and giving too much information there's another structure I want to introduce you to that is incredibly focused in concise this is a structure for pitching I'm often asked by people what happens if somebody asks me to pitch an idea in the moment so you're getting on an elevator and your boss's boss steps in and they look at you say oh what are you working on I'm about

to go speak with the board maybe I can help you you got to respond four sentence starters you just finish these sentences what if you could so that for example and that's not all what if you could so that for example and that's not all let me show you how this works by taking a suggestion from you all and I'll put it in this structure and then together as a group we're going to use this for something can somebody think of a product or service that you would like to hear a pitch for what would

you like to hear me give a pitch for somebody suggest one your book my book well look at that well thank you all right I appreciate that so my new book is all about how to speak more effectively in the moment what if you could feel more comfortable and confident when put on the spot so that you could answer questions well or give appropriate feedback for example imagine an upcoming job interview that you nail that you get all of your points across in a way that really represents who you are and that's not all you

can apply these principles to small talk to apologizing and to even introducing yourself do you see how just answering those sentences gets you to a tight clear pitch so here's what we're going to do for all of you to practice and thank you for that opportunity okay all of us are here for our Stamford reunion let's imagine for your next reunion you volunteer to help recruit people to come back to campus for reunion so you're going to make a pitch let's go through each of these four together as a group somebody give me a the

end of this sentence what if you could could what if you could see old friends so that you can walk down memory lane and and experience the things that you enjoyed about being on campus for example somebody give me an example of a of a memory or an exciting thing you'd like to share with a old friend for example here the band hear the band play and sing some of the old songs and that's not all and that's not all you what you can go to a great lecture on communicating in the moment I love

it do you see how easy that was do you see how the structure helps you and it made it very concise so by focusing on these two messaging elements structure and focus you can actually be much better at speaking in the moment so some resources for you to continue learning these Concepts and and others I host a podcast for the business school it's called think fast talk smart it's all about communication skills I get to interview experts from around campus and around the world on how to be a better communicators lots of your favorite faculty

have been guests on the show and this show I'm proud to say has won many prestigious Awards including best dog walking podcast and best commute podcast because our episodes are very concise and short 20 minutes we've won some other ones as well I and there's a picture of the book think faster talk smarter if you take a a shot of this QR code it'll take you to a whole bunch of resources that I make available to our students here and elsewhere I encourage all of you to think about how you can be a better in

the- moment speaker it takes time and it takes practice the only way you get better at communication planned or spontaneous is three things repetition reflection and feedback repetition reflection and feedback you have to practice you have to think about what's working and what's not working and you have to seek out advice and guidance from teachers from colleagues from mentors to help that's how we get better