(upbeat music) - Hello, and welcome to another episode of "All The Hacks," a show about upgrading your life, money, and travel. I'm your host, Chris Hutchins, and I'm really excited for my conversation today with Stanford professor, Matt Abrahams, who has dedicated his career to help people excel at communicating, even when they've been put on the spot in public.

And this episode is gonna be so applicable to everyone listening, because most of the conversations we all have in our lives are spontaneous, unless it's a planned speech or presentation. But even then, I find that a good part of it ends up being off the cuff. So we're gonna talk about the six-step process he developed for his latest book, "Think Faster, Talk Smarter," which will help you do exactly that in almost any situation.

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- So there's probably a wide range of comfort levels with communication and public speaking amongst people listening right now, but I think there's a situation that you're familiar with that's tough for lots of people, and that's when they're put on the spot. So first off, I just wanna know, what do you think makes that kind of spontaneous conversational situation so tough, and why do you think handling it can become such a valuable skill for people to learn?

- Well, you're right. Most of our communication, if you think about it, is in the moment. You know, it's very rare that it's all planned. It's the presentation, pitch, or meeting. A lot of what we do is in the moment, and I think it is most fraught with anxiety and concern because we have so many things conspiring against us at once.

Time pressure, we wanna do it right, we have to adjust and adapt to what's happening in the moment. All of those things make these situations really, really hard for us. Yet, with some work, we can develop the skills that are needed. Just like any other skill, you can develop the skills to speak better in the moment.

- You've written a book on this. I see it behind you in the video. Let's talk about these skills 'cause I think you have a method for developing these skills. I would start through the method, but if you have anything else you wanna cover first, go for it. I'm curious how this can be overcome.

- Absolutely. So, happy to walk through the steps. The first thing I wanna say, Chris, that I think is really important is that we can all learn to get better at spontaneous speaking. Many of us feel like, oh, that's just for those other people who have the gift of gab, they just know how to do it, or they're extreme extroverts and that's how it goes.

That's not true. Everybody can get better at speaking in the moment, be it answering questions, giving feedback, making small talk. We can learn to do it. I, over the past 10 years, have developed a methodology. It started as a need out of Stanford's Business School, where I teach. The deans came to me and said, "Our incredibly bright students are really struggling answering questions in the moment." So, when that professor says, "What do you think?" That dreaded cold call, they knew the answers, they just really couldn't give the answers well.

And so, that's where I started this journey to identify this six-step methodology, which really divides into two categories, mindset and messaging. So, the four steps in mindset. First, start with anxiety. And I'm sure you and I will talk a bit about anxiety around speaking, because that's something that really, really bothers a lot of people, myself included.

So, we have to learn to manage anxiety. Not overcome it, I don't think we ever can, but I do think we can learn to manage it. That's step one. Step two, many of us in these spontaneous speaking situations want to do it right. We wanna be perfect or give the best answer possible.

And you know, Chris, I've been doing this a long time. There is no one right answer to anything. You have to just find the best way to do it for you. So, there are better ways and worse ways, there is no one right way. Step three is about seeing these situations as opportunities.

Many of us feel threatened. If I told you, Chris, right now, "Hey, guess what? When I'm done talking, I'm gonna give you a test and you have to answer these on the spot." You would probably not say, "Oh, that's great. I'm really excited." You'd probably say, "Oh crap, I better pay attention more." And it is in that moment, you see it as a threat or a challenge.

And if we can reframe that as an opportunity, like, "Yeah, I get to learn more. I get to share information. It's gonna be better for both of us." That opportunistic mindset makes a big difference. And that's step three. Step four of mindset really has to do with listening. It seems strange that we're talking about speaking, but the best way to be a good in the moment speaker is to listen well.

So, you can make the right nuanced choices. And I'm happy to talk more about listening later. But those are the first four for mindset. Anxiety, getting out of your own way, seeing it as an opportunity and listening well. The second two steps are messaging. First, you have to have a structure.

Our brains are not wired to remember things that are just lists of information. We need things in a logical packaged way. And then finally, the final step is what I call the F word of communication. It's not that naughty one, I see you smiling. It's focus, we need to be focused.

Many people take us on a journey of their discovery of what they're saying while they're saying it, when they're responding spontaneously. And that doesn't work. We need to be clear, we need to be concise. So, we have to focus our messages. So, those six steps when practiced over time can help anybody become a better in the moment communicator.

- I wanna go through them, but I do wanna ask another question. If I rewind, you talked about how anyone can learn these skills. I'm curious, let's say someone feels confident with their ability to speak on the spot. How much opportunity is there to use these to improve versus someone who feels uncomfortable can get to a baseline?

- Yes, you can absolutely improve using these steps. A lot of people are good at some of these steps, but not all of them and really could use the practice. And I believe all of us can continue to get better at communication. I envision improving communication as ascending a mountain and people are on different parts of the mountain, but we're all striving to get to the top.

I don't even see the summit yet and I've been doing this for decades. So, we can all get better. And what it's about is the finer details of each of these steps. When you're first coming to this work and you're a nervous novice speaker, you're dealing with the big rocks.

And now what we begin to get into is the little pebbles and the sand that can help us get better at it. - And is there any kind of diagnostic or test or something that I could take and be like, "Which one do I need to focus on?" - Well, so I think most people need to start with anxiety.

And anxiety around speaking in public is ubiquitous. So, I often tell people to start there. Then the next step that I think is most important after managing anxiety is the messaging step. Really beginning to work on structure. I think if you said, "Hey, I'm a super busy person. "I can only do a little bit of work.

"What should I do?" I would say start with managing anxiety, move then next to how do you structure your messages. All of the other steps are essential, but those are the two that I think will get you accelerated down this path the most. - Let's go a little deeper on anxiety 'cause I think it comes in a lot of forms and someone that hasn't necessarily believed that they have it might actually have it.

I think maybe our society puts too harsh of a term on the word anxiety to think it could mean a lot, but just not being confident walking out on stage or walking into a meeting is a form of anxiety and it doesn't need to debilitate you, but it's something you can manage.

- That's true, that's true. I mean, it's everything from a little jitter all the way up to full-on really, really anxious. So there's a wide range. So anxiety looms large. Those of us who study it believe it's part of being human, that part of getting up in front of other people is risk invoking and it causes us to respond as if we're under threat.

To address it, we have to take a two-pronged approach. You have to look both at symptoms and sources. So Chris, I'm curious, I'll share mine first, but I'm curious what happens to you when you get nervous and being up in front of others? For me, I blush and I perspire.

I turn red and I sweat. What happens for you? - It's a good timing to ask this question 'cause on Saturday I gave a talk at a conference and I hadn't given a talk in a public, in-person setting for years. And I know the feelings before, which were really about me.

There was always like the one or two parts of the talk that I knew I just didn't have 100% down. And you'll never have it 100% down, right? It's like, what's the slide? In this case, there were slides. There were two slides where I thought I was likely to butcher something because I just couldn't remember it.

And so the moment I have before going out is like, can I just feel good about the thing I feel worse about? - Oh, that's interesting. - I don't know the physical manifestation of that other than I guess like closing my eyes and thinking about it, pacing around the room.

- Interesting, so for you, it's a mental thing. - I have no fear walking on the stage, no fear of all the people, no fear of the microphone. It's like my fear was I'm a lots of content small window. So I had a 15 minute talk and there were 48 slides.

- Oh my goodness. - So it was very structured. And there was one part where I was talking about a study and it's actually about podcasting. And the study from the UC system was about in-head localization and how when you hear people talking in a conversation through headphones specifically, it creates the kind of intimacy that's almost indistinguishable from real human relations.

And so you'd feel like this person, you know them, they're your best friend because they're on your headphones and it creates that experience. But some of the nuances of that study and what they came to, I was like, am I gonna miss it? Am I gonna forget it? Am I even gonna forget that it's in-head localization and call it normalization?

And that was the thing that was getting me tripped out. - Right, before I comment on that, I just wanna say right now for you and your listeners, we are really connecting because we are in some of your listeners earbuds as we speak. I find that research fascinating. For many people, very similar to you, they get in their head literally, not what that study was about, worrying about, am I saying it right?

Am I going to make sure I get as much information as I really want to across to my audience? And that causes a lot of that pressure. That to me is more of a source than a symptom. So let me distinguish the two. A symptom is what physically goes on in your body.

So for me, I turn red, I perspire, other people shake, some people speak really fast. This is your body's reaction to the fight or flight response and there's some things we can do to manage symptoms. For example, take a deep belly breath. Make sure your exhale is longer than your inhale because it's on the exhale that the magic happens.

You can, if you are somebody like me who blushes and perspires a lot, cool your body down. Holding something cold in the palm of your hand will actually reduce your core body temperature, just like when you have a fever and you put a cold compress on your head. So there are things that we can do to reduce some of the symptoms.

Now we also have to think about the sources, which is what you were really talking about. These are the things that initiate and exacerbate our anxiety. And for you, it was that internal dialogue of here's what I want to say. Can I make sure that I say it and say it in the right way to convey what I want?

That's a lot of conversation that's going on in your head. And what that does is it steals away your cognitive bandwidth to actually focus on what you're saying. It's sort of like a laptop or your phone where you have lots of windows open all at the same time. When you do that, your CPU actually performs less well.

And if my brain is judging and evaluating and I'm trying to speak something intelligent at the same time, I have less cognitive resources to do either well. So I have the audacity in front of my Stanford MBA students on the first day of every class, I say we want to maximize our mediocrity.

And I tell you, their jaws drop. Nobody in their lives has ever told them to maximize mediocrity. But I tell them the reason why is when you're striving for being really, really right, perfect in what you're doing, you're actually reducing the ability to do it well. So you will actually do better when you just focus on getting the task done, just answer the question, just give the feedback, just say hi to somebody during small talk.

And by just focusing on that and turning down that volume of judgment and evaluation, you'll feel less nervous. So we have to take symptoms and sources. Everybody is different. What trips you up is different than what trips me up. So that's why I have everybody I work with create an individualized anxiety management plan.

Besides deep breathing, there is no one recommendation I would make to everybody. Everybody is different. And that's why I always ask, what happens for you? You're in your head. I'm not in my head, I'm in my body. That's what causes me my issues. And that's how we have to work on them.

- And is there a specific thing that if it's in your body, it's a deep breath and cool down. If it's in your head, it's a think about the fact that, I mean, what helped me was anytime I'm giving a talk, I always think that even if I only hit 80% of the talking points, it's gonna be great.

Like the point is not to hit a hundred. And that's what I do is I remind myself that I'm not gonna hit it all. And that's okay. - So for you, it's giving yourself permission. And that's great. For other people who are in their head, I tell them focus on the value you're bringing to the audience.

It's not about you, it's about them. And just reminding yourself you're giving value, that's enough to help them. So everybody is different. My first book I wrote was called "Speaking Up Without Freaking Out." It was 50 techniques based on academic research to help people manage anxiety. I expect three to five of the 50 to work for each individual.

So everybody's different. So the advice I'd give you, which sounds like you're already doing this, which is to remind yourself that you're the only one who knows what you could say. We only hear what you do say. So if you're fine with saying what you say, that's great. You don't have to be nervous about it.

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Again, that's allthehacks.com/G-E-L-T. That's managing my anxiety. I know you said the next one is messaging, but I think for the sake of the conversation, it might be easier to go in sequence. - So the next step I've already broached, which is this notion of striving for perfection, precludes us from actually doing well at all.

It's that cognitive bandwidth issue. So we need to let go of being perfect, and we need to just focus on how we can best connect. So it's really about thinking about my audience, what's relevant and important to them. You know, when people speak, let's take planned speaking as an example.

What you did this past weekend, you had your slides, it was planned, you had thought it through in advance. Most people, when they speak in those circumstances, define success as getting from the beginning to the end. My job is to speak, I am going to get everything that I've intended to say out.

That's really not what your goal is. Your goal is to take your material, connect it to your audience so that they better understand it. So if we switch that gear from being, I gotta get it across and I gotta get it across well, to I have to get it out there so people actually really understand it, that focusing on connection and relevance is the unlock to get us out of that self-judgment and self-evaluation.

So the way we really maximize mediocrity to do really good things is to give ourselves permission to focus on really connecting our content to our audience. - I don't want everyone to think, "Oh wow, this was so easy." The funny thing was before the talk, I was kind of hanging out in this room with a few of the other speakers.

And for me, I was like, "Oh, I wanna go have a conversation with this other person." And you know, there was a guy who focuses on longevity and health tech. And I was like, "What do I talk to this guy about?" So just to let the audience listening now know, for as much as I felt really good about my talk, I felt equally not good about having a great conversation with a random person for whom I had a little bit of research on.

And I think in a little way, I was like striving for perfection too much. I was like, "What's the perfect thing "I can talk about to with this person "that someone else isn't already coming up "to talk to him about? "What do I say?" And I kind of got lost.

So I don't know if fixing that circumstance is also handled in this step or not, but that one was hard for me. - It certainly is addressed here. So this whole second part of my book is I identify six very common spontaneous speaking situations and give very specific advice on how to manage them.

One of them is what you're talking about, small talk and chit-chat. And we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to be really, really interesting and be really, really insightful in those conversations. And that makes it really stressful. A friend of mine, her name is Rachel Greenwald. She is a very interesting woman.

She is a professional matchmaker and an academic. And she looks at conversation and chit-chat, obviously small talk is part of that. And she has this great saying that I tell everybody, it's about being interested, not interesting. And that's really another way of saying it's about connection, not perfection. We go into small talk as it sounds like you were doing, thinking it's like playing tennis.

I have to get that ball over the net and it has to land just right away. And instead, you need to think of it as hacky sack. You're significantly younger than I am, but you know what hacky sack is where you kick to that beanbag. - I am familiar.

- In hacky sack, the goal is for me to serve it to you so you can keep the ball in the air when you serve it back to me or somebody else. So we're actually collaborating to keep the game going. It's not like tennis where it's a, I win, you lose sort of thing.

And when you go into these small talk situations saying it's about being interested, not interesting, lead with curiosity, lead with connection, then all of a sudden it gets easier. And that perfection idea that you were being worried about or were concerned about in your meeting the people backstage reduces.

- Interesting. To be interested, it sounds like you need to realize you're probably not talking as much as you might think trying to be interesting. - You bet. - Do you have a favorite way that you open conversations with strangers and new people that might be things people would like to hear?

- I wanna put this in context of, when I am in appropriate situations, yes, I don't just randomly go around talking to strangers, although that might be interesting to do. Yes, so we wanna avoid these doom loops that we can get into. So it's the, "Hey, Chris, how are you?" And you say, "Great, Matt, how are you?" "Okay, now we're nowhere better than we were." "Hi, Chris, what do you do?" "I do podcasting." "Matt, what do you do?" "I teach." "All right, great." I like highlighting things that are in the environment in context.

So if you're at an event, like it sounds like you were recently, you could comment on something that happened before you were speaking. Maybe there was a big keynote or maybe there was some kind of gala or party or whatever. You could comment on that. When I was writing this chapter in the book, I happened to go to an event and I walked in.

I said, "I'm writing about small talk. I better practice what I'm writing about." So I noticed in the room that everybody, almost everybody to a person was wearing a different colored blue shirt. There were more blue shirts than anything I'd seen. I went up to somebody I didn't know and I said, "Did I miss the memo?

Everybody's in blue shirts." And the person looked around and said, "You're right, that's really interesting." And then we started a whole conversation around tire and then it turned into a whole bunch of other stuff. So highlighting something in the environment can really be a nice way to start. It gives you a commonality, a common ground.

And it's not one of these trite heuristic based starts. - I wanna go back to some of this, but I have another question that's a follow-up, which is the opposite. Now I'm in this small talk conversation. Do you have a tactic for when you're done? I find that some people just always have a great way to handle this.

And it might not be part of thinking fast and talking smart, but it certainly seems like something I think you might know. - Well, I'd love to hear the tactics you've seen work. I mean, most of us, our default is biology. I gotta go to the bathroom, I'm hungry, I'm thirsty, right?

The problem with doing that is one, it's very transparent. And two, sometimes the person's like, "Oh yeah, you know, I'm thirsty too." And now you're walking and talking more. So again, my friend Rachel has this great way of doing it. She calls it the white flag approach and not white flag like I surrender.

If you know anything about auto racing, before the final lap, they'll wave a white flag to signal to everybody that this is the final lap. So Chris, if you and I are having a chit-chat, small talk conversation, I might say, "Hey, there's some people over there I wanna speak with.

But before I go, I'm really curious for you to tell me more about the last job you had, 'cause we started talking about it. You share more with me." At the end of that, I say, "That's really fascinating. Thank you so much for the conversation. I'm gonna head over there and meet my friends." It's a nice, polite way to exit.

You're not surprised. I previewed that I'm going over there. You're able to plan for what you're gonna do next. So you're not just left there going, "Okay, now what?" So it's a very elegant way to politely leave a conversation. So essentially you signal you're leaving, you dive deeper into something that was said, and then you close it off with gratitude and move on.

It works well. I've used it ever since I learned it. - Sounds like something I'd wanna use all the time. 'Cause I think often if you're like, "Oh, I need to go here." It's a little bit of a snub that's like, "This isn't interesting." But in this context, you're like, "I need to do this thing, but actually this is so interesting.

I'm not gonna do it yet. Could you give me a little bit more?" - That's right. It's right. It's a very polite way. And I've learned some really amazing things in that last moment. Because people know it's ending. So they wanna share the key stuff, the cool stuff. So it's really interesting to do that.

- And I guess while we're on this topic of conversations with people, small talk, is there anything you do when people are just talking too much, but you kind of wanna... I mean, I guess if the goal is to listen, maybe you just let them. But especially if there's three or four people there, I wonder if there's a tactic.

- Yeah. And I'm glad you're asking this generically and not so I'm giving you a tip you'll use against me because I know I talk a lot sometimes. So the first thing, I wanna take a step back. And those people who study conversation have identified two types of conversational turns.

If you think about it, a conversation is turn-taking. One type of turn is a supporting turn. It's where I support what you're saying. In other words, I ask you to say more about it. And the other is a shifting turn, where I take what you're talking about, the topic, and move it to something of my interest.

So imagine you and I are talking and you say, "Hey, I just went to Hawaii." A supporting response would be, "Oh, really? Which island did you go to?" A shifting response would be, "Oh, I just went to Costa Rica." So you see how one supports, one shifts. Supporting responses get people to keep talking.

Shifting responses stop people from talking. What the research suggests is you want to do about three quarters to two thirds of supporting, and then one quarter to one third shifting. Because if you never shift, if all you do is keep asking questions and probing, it seems like you're hiding something, you're interrogating somebody.

But if all you do is talk about yourself, then you're not really having a conversation. So the first bit of advice that I have that answers your question is be mindful of if you're encouraging the other person to talk, right? So sometimes the person's talking a lot 'cause you're encouraging it.

If you're in a group and one person's dominating, I think the single best thing to use is a paraphrase to get the conversation back on track or take the floor away. I advise people who are moderators or facilitators in a work setting to use this same technique. Highlight something of value the person has said, name it, and then move on to something else.

So if we're talking about your vacation to Hawaii and you keep going on about how great it was, making me really jealous, I might say, yeah, it sounds like you were able to relax a lot. In fact, I love relaxing by reading a book. I'm curious, what do the rest of you do to relax?

So you see that I've commented on something you said and gave credence to it, I valued it, but then I move it away from you. It's the politest way I know to shut people up. - Now I'm like, oh, I have all these tactics, but like, am I walking into a conversation reviewing my guy?

Like, is it just something that over time, practice and practice, it becomes natural? - So, I mean, the bottom line in all of this, and this is the big counterintuitive takeaway, I think, from my book is that you actually have to practice and prepare to be spontaneous. And when you hear that, you say, well, wait a minute, that sounds weird.

But if you think about many things in your life, if you've ever played a sport before, you probably practiced, you probably did drills. And it was through those practice and drills that allowed you in the game to be flexible and agile. Same thing if you're a jazz musician, you don't just play any note or chord, you actually leverage notes and chords that you've practiced before.

So you do have to do some practice with this. It could be a lot of practice, could be a little, it really depends, it depends on the circumstance. But yes, you will get better by virtue of doing it. I certainly, my intent is not for people to go in with a notebook and examine everything they're doing in their interactions.

It's just knowing a little bit about this can really help free you up and you'll start noticing things and you'll start finding certain things work well for you. My mother-in-law had a black belt in small talk. She was amazing. She's from the Midwest, she would come out and visit.

By the time she got off the plane, she'd have three new friends and have lunch dates for when she got back home. And that's because of her superpower, which was to really listen and she had a three word amazing phrase. She would simply say, "Tell me more." And I asked her, I said, "Tell me more about how you learned to do tell me more." And she said over the years of just asking people, she learned by saying, "Tell me more," people would open up and share more and feel that she was really interested, which she was.

So you'll find your own way. Tell me more might not work for you, you might have some other way, but the more you do it, you find your big unlock. - Now, a question like tell me more feels like it's very easy, it's not very threatening, you're already in the middle of a conversation.

Let's rewind to before you've gotten into that and someone poses a question at you and you feel maybe you're caught off guard and you wanna think about it like maybe reframing as an opportunity. I know this is kind of comes to reframing the circumstances, which we're back to number three, but maybe that'll be our segue.

- Yeah, so if somebody asks a question or any situation where you're caught off guard, you need to give yourself a little time and there are three ways to do it. One is to pause. Many of us feel a lot of pressure to respond right away and we don't need to, you can take a beat, you can just take a pause for a second and then respond.

We feel like there's this time to respond pressure and you can take a moment. Second, you could ask a clarifying question that buys you some time as well. It also helps make sure that you're going to respond appropriately. And then finally, you can leverage a paraphrase. So if you ask me a question or ask me for feedback, I can paraphrase, not like a five-year-old who repeats verbatim what you say, but I could highlight something in the question or the ask that you've had of me.

And again, that buys me time. Both asking questions and paraphrasing are lower order cognitive skills. In other words, we can do other things while paraphrasing in questioning. So there are ways to buy yourself time to get your feet under you so that you can respond. - Are there things you would also do in that moment if you're feeling very caught off guard and you're not sure?

Or maybe one thing that I think is interesting as I observe my three-year-old, if I ask her a question and she doesn't know the answer, she just says, "I don't know." And like so often, I think as adults, we feel, especially now that I'm a parent, I feel obliged to give an answer.

And I think in many cases, it's probably just fine to say, you know what, I'm not really an expert on that topic. I don't have an answer. Like, is that the thing we need to learn if we feel like we're caught off guard and we're too defensive? Maybe the answer is you don't have to answer.

- So I think that's true, but I wanna go back to the fact that it's lovely that you have a young child who actually wants to hear your answers. I have teenagers and they are not interested in my answers, nor do they think I have a good answer to their questions.

My son the other day had to do a presentation in class. I said, "Oh, is there anything I can do to help you?" And he's like, "No, what do you know about this stuff?" And I'm like, "This is one thing I actually know a lot about." And it's just funny.

Yes, we do not always have to respond. And the expectation that we will always have the right answer or an answer can get us in trouble. If you do not know the answer, my advice is this. You say, "I don't know. I'm going to look to find out. I will get back to you." And if you have a hunch or an inkling, say my hunch or inkling is it's this.

We actually know of research, or I know of research that has shown that doing that bolsters your credibility in some cases more than actually giving the right answer. Because one, you're being honest. Two, you're demonstrating tenacity and that you're gonna go find the answer. And three, you're demonstrating that you can think beyond what you know by saying my hunch or inkling is.

So sometimes saying, "I don't know," and then explaining how you'll follow up actually gives more value to your credibility than actually just answering the question. Now, if you're doing that to every question, that certainly is a different issue. But I don't think it's reasonable for everybody to expect to know every answer to every question.

- Interesting. And so it's funny 'cause I have a tactic that as soon as you said what you said about bolstering credibility, I thought I'd share, which when we were fundraising for my company, investors will ask you questions and you have to give answers. And there are some questions where the answer is fine if it's not backed up with data or premeditated.

But there are also some questions that I think sometimes people give less credibility to when you're speaking on the spot. And so a tactic I had was every question I thought someone could ask, I created a slide to back up the answer. And so people would say like, "Do you think that this product will work at scale?" Every entrepreneur is gonna answer that question.

Yes, of course. Here's five reasons why it will. You know, it always feels like when you're off the cuff with an answer like that, people might not believe it. So I would just jump to the slide and I won't get into the nuance of how I found all these slides on the fly, but I would say, "Actually, yes, I do have an answer." And then I would point to it.

And I'd basically put myself in the situation to be caught off guard in advance, wrote down what I would say. And that also bolstered the credibility because people were like, "Oh, if you wrote it down, it must be more true than if you just thought about it on the fly." - Well, and I think it also helped because you actually took the time to think about it and anticipate their questions.

We are really impressed when people focus on our needs in our communication. And you just gave a great example of something I really believe in, which is the practice and preparation to be spontaneous. You thought in advance of what are some of the specific questions or challenges that people would bring up?

And you probably found those questions based on your experience. Maybe you asked people, maybe you did some research. You can use generative AI and say, "I'm pitching a product of this to these people. What are questions they might ask?" So there's a lot you can do to prepare. And you went one step further and created actual content to support it.

That's awesome. Stockpiling potential data or information you can use is great. Think of it this way. A structure is a recipe, and we haven't really talked a lot about structure, but a structure is a recipe. And the stockpiled information, like your pre-prepared slides, are the ingredients. So all I have to do is assemble.

I can be a really good cook if I have a good recipe and good ingredients. I can do that. And that's what we're asking people to do in spontaneous situations. And it sounds like you did that well. I mean, we did raise the money. The company didn't work out, but at least the pitch worked.

That's right. Well, that's part of the battle. For the podcast, and really just because I like it, I read a lot of finance news, probably too much, but it never gets old seeing one of my partners in the news, and even better when it's because a million-dollar Banksy got everyday investors a 32% net return.

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And when you do, please support the show and get yourself priority access to the platform by going to allthehacks.com/masterworks. That's allthehacks.com/masterworks for special access. See important Regulation A disclosures at masterworks.com/cd. My fitness routine this year had a few rocky starts, but I am back into it now. And honestly, one of the things that helped me get back is that I just added some new workout gear.

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I just wanna thank you quick for listening to and supporting the show. Your support is what keeps this show going. To get all of the URLs, codes, deals, and discounts from our partners, you can go to allthehacks.com/deals. So please consider supporting those who support us. - I wanna get off of mindset, but the last thing was on listening.

We've talked a bit about it, but I just wanna go a little deeper because it seems like it's really important. Especially, I've had lots of conversations on the podcast about negotiating and why listening can be really valuable. Any other tactics for people to become better listeners? - Well, the first thing is to acknowledge that we're not good at it, right?

Most of us don't listen well enough. We listen just enough to get the gist of what somebody is saying. And then we start judging, evaluating, rehearsing, planning. So we all need to get better at listening. And believe me, my wife reminds me all the time that I need to practice what I teach.

So we can all still work on it. I like to tell people, when you're listening, listen for what is the bottom line, the crux of what somebody is saying. Because when you listen more deeply, you will actually attend to more information. And in the book of my chapter all about listening, I borrow from one of my colleagues at the business school.

His name is Collins Dobbs. And he teaches a class on crucial conversations. And he has this methodology he likes. With his permission, I borrowed it for listening. And it's three things, pace, space, grace. We, as you well know, live in a frenetic world. Lots are going on. We've got lots of demands on our time.

You have to slow down to listen well. You can't listen well while running around. So you have to slow down, slow the pace. Second, you have to make the space. Sometimes it's physical space. Get to a place where you can actually hear what the person is saying. But more importantly is mental space.

Our head is so cluttered with our judgments, our evaluations, our thinking about what's next. I have to be present. And I have to give myself mental attention to focus on what you're saying. And then finally, grace. I have to give myself permission to not only listen to what you're saying, but notice the context and how you're interacting in the context.

And also to listen to my intuition. I've been around a while. I have some past experience. What is that telling me based on what you're saying? Allow me to give you a quick example, Chris. Imagine you and I come out of a meeting and you turn to me and you say, Matt, how do you think that went?

If I'm listening superficially, I hear Chris wants feedback. Well, Chris, I think you screwed it up here. I think we could have done better here. Next time we should do this. But had I really listened with pace, space, grace, slowed down, really focused, allowed myself some intuition, I might've noticed that you came out the back door of the room.

I came out the front door. You were looking down and not having your normal animated voice when you asked me for the feedback. Maybe, just maybe what you wanted was not feedback, but support because you didn't feel it went so well. But I didn't pay any attention to that.

And I just itemized all the things that you did wrong. Now I've made you feel worse. Perhaps had I been listening more intently, I might've come back to you and said, would you like me to share some thoughts on what we could do better next time? Or do you want me just to listen to what you have to say?

And then I make it a choice for you. So that's why listening is so important because we can be wrong with what's needed in the moment if we're not really paying attention. - I like the clarifying, you know, you could say, are you more interested in what went well, what didn't go, whatever the question is, give them a little more guidance, which helps if you weren't listening and you realize after the fact, oh crap, I wasn't listening, but I want to, I guess there's still ability to recover with some clarifying questions.

- Absolutely, and it shows you really want to connect. - So let's recap mindset. - The four mindset steps are first, manage anxiety, tame that anxiety beast. The second is about connection over perfection. It's about dialing down the judgment and evaluation we do when we speak. The third step is seeing these speaking as opportunities, not threats and challenges.

And then finally listen for the bottom line of what the person is saying. If you do those four things, you will be in a much better position to speak in the moment. - I really wish we had talked about this last week, but alas, here we are. - I'm sure you did so well last week that you're gonna have an opportunity again this coming week.

- Okay, so let's move on. Let's talk about messaging. - Absolutely, so messaging is really, really important. It's all about structure. Our brains are not wired for lists and detail. You know, when's the last time you heard somebody ramble, Chris? Probably really recently. Hopefully not at this moment, right?

And how's it feel when somebody rambles? It's stressful. It's like, why the heck is the person saying this? Why are they saying it in this way? So we either have to intently study what's being said or we just give up. We're like, that's it, I'm not gonna pay attention.

Our brains are wired for structure. Something that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. A logical connection of ideas. Let me give you an example of a structure and I'm happy to talk about lots of other structures. The whole second part of the book assigns a particular structure to all these different types of spontaneous speaking situations.

Because my goal is that everybody has at least one tool in their toolkit so they can pull it out if they need to in a situation where they don't know what to do or what to say. The one I'll share with you because you've talked about pitching before, it's a very common one.

Problem, solution, benefit. I bet every pitch you ever did or heard started with, here's this issue, here's how we think we can address it or make it better, and here's the benefit if we do so. Sometimes it's not an issue, sometimes it's an opportunity. Nothing's wrong, but we could make it better.

So by using problem, solution, benefit, you have a logical connection of ideas, you build in connection and transition among the different points. Now that you understand the problem, how do we solve it? And it keeps everybody together and packages it up nicely. And for you, as the communicator, it helps you focus on your message.

So when you say something, you could say it in lots of different ways. If I know I'm gonna say it, problem, solution, benefit, it helps me focus. So having a structure is critical to your communication. - My mind went wild when you just said that, 'cause I was like, wow, if I just had the foresight before talking about anything, really, to just frame it in a new way, it would be really powerful.

Are there other quick, easy structures that you could mention? We don't need to go into all the detail, but just to inspire us. - I'm glad you had that epiphany. And you know what? I have a book that can help you solve that problem. So yeah, I mean, that's really what it is.

It's really interesting the reactions people have when I talk to them about this. People are like, that structure thing is fantastic. And then when we talk about the next step, if we get into the focus thing, there are a couple of things I'll share about focus that really, and people are like, oh, I'm gonna be much more clear and concise now.

So there are a couple other structures. My favorite structure, and the one I call the Swiss army knife of all structures, 'cause you can use it in so many circumstances, is three questions. What, so what, now what? If you answer those three questions, you have a nicely structured response.

Let me give you more detail. The what is your idea, your product, your service, your offering, your notion. So what is, why is it relevant or important to the person or people you're talking to? And the now what is what comes next? Maybe it's set up a meeting, take questions, give some feedback, whatever.

So let me share with you how this could work. Imagine I'm doing an update. Many people have update meetings they have to do. They have to say what they're working on, et cetera. The what is your update. The so what is why it's important, and the now what is what you're going to do next.

It's packaged nicely. If you ask me for feedback, and this time you really want it, I could give you feedback as the what. The so what is why it's important, and then the now what is what I'd like you to do differently. So imagine we come out of that very same meeting, and this time you really want feedback.

I might say, you did a great job, except when you talked about the implementation plan. You spoke quickly and you didn't go into as much depth as you did the other parts. When you speak quickly without giving depth, people think you're not as prepared. Next time, I'd like you to slow down and include these two specific examples.

That was what, so what, now what, help me package it. When you're writing an email, I don't know about you, I get emails and I stare at them. I'm like, what the heck is this person want? Make the subject line the now what, the body of the email is the what, and the so what.

So you can use this structure in so many ways. I know you're going to ask this question because I know you think about how, okay, great, how could I use it? Practice, and here's how you practice. After you listen to your favorite podcast, I want you to pause it, stop it, and say, what was that about?

Why is it important to me? Or what can I take away from it? And then the now what is what can I do with that information? So by quizzing yourself, you're training that, your brain to see the world in that structure. Next time you watch an advertisement on TV, ask what problem are they solving?

How are they solving it? And what's the benefit they're saying I'll take from it? And by seeing it and reflecting on it, you actually learn to get better at deploying it. - Interesting, so you could just use this anytime you're seeing something happen in the world. And the thing came to mind, we haven't talked at all about credit card points or miles or anything.

That's a theme that comes through this show. And I was just thinking, oh, if I were telling a friend about it, I'd say, oh, the problem is, you know, you don't have a card that optimizes this, here's the solution, here's the benefit. I'm already running through examples in my mind, which maybe isn't the most present way I could be here, but I blame you for that.

A lot of these examples though, are all professional. And so I wanna jump to maybe a circumstance that a lot of people have been put in on the personal side. It's like, well, what if I'm giving a toast? What if I'm, you know, doing something at a wedding, friend's dinner?

How would you think about a framework for that? - So that's one of the many areas that I talk about in the second part of the book. Toasts and tributes are a very common spontaneous speaking activity. And we have all witnessed horrific toasts and tributes. - So many. - Chris, tell me one thing you've noticed in seeing different toasts or tributes that people do wrong.

I'll start, they make it about themselves and not the event or the person they're toasting. What's something you've noticed? - It's just, it keeps going. It never ends. - That's right, right. It's not concise. - Or they use a lot of inside jokes that no one in the room understands.

- So we know what a bad toast or tribute looks like. So I have a structure that I like to encourage people to use and it has an acronym. It is WHAT, W-H-A-T. The W stands for why are we all here? So when you give a toast, you have to make sure everybody knows why you're here.

Now, clearly, if you're at a wedding, you don't have to say we're at a wedding. People figured it out. The way people are dressed and what happened. But if you're at a corporate event and you're asked to stand up and give a team a particular tribute for something they did, you might wanna say why you're speaking right now.

Hey, that team that released that product last week, really important. So sometimes you have to make sure everybody knows what you're giving a tribute to. The H is for how are you connected? Now, if you're doing a tribute at work and you're the boss and you stand up, you don't have to say I'm the boss.

People know that. But if you're at a wedding and you stand up to give a toast, many people might not know who you are. You might say I've known the groom for 20 years. Oh, okay, that's why you're speaking. So sometimes you have to explain how you're connected to the event.

Then the next part is an anecdote or two. And there's some really big advice for those anecdotes. One, make them clear and concise. Make them relevant to everybody. Obviously keep them appropriate. And that will help you be really tight and clear. So you tell a story or two. And then the T stands for thank you or toast.

So at a wedding, I might say cheers and you actually give a toast. If I am giving a tribute at work or something like that, I might say thank you to the team. I look forward to seeing the future success. So why are you here? How are you connected?

Anecdote or two, thank you or toast. And if you follow that roadmap, it gets you through toasts very effectively. - I don't have a toast coming up. Maybe I just need to create one. - There you go. You can toast to the success of our episode together. - Exactly.

Where does humor fit into any of this? We haven't talked about humor at all, but I feel like it's something that when it happens, it makes a conversation better, but when it's forced, it makes a conversation awkward. - Absolutely. So I call humor graduate school version engagement. You really have to be careful.

I wanna give a tangential advice. Two of my colleagues at Stanford's Business School, Jennifer Ocker and Naomi Bagdonas, wrote a book called "Humor Seriously" and they teach a class on the same topic. It is the only business book I have ever read where I was laughing out loud. And they give very good advice about how to be funny, how to find your own sense of humor that's appropriate for work situations.

So anybody interested in it, I think it's a great resource. Humor, you have to, as you said, you have to be careful. I am a big fan of focus grouping humor beforehand. Now I know that sounds a little weird for somebody who's talking about spontaneous speaking, but we are not the best judges of our own humor, right?

I think I'm really funny. The world doesn't always agree with me. It's in my best interest to say, hey, I'm going to this event. I might be put on the spot to speak. If I were to say this, is that funny? And then listen to what people say. So humor is a great way to connect.

It's a way of building what we academics call immediacy. We feel close to somebody, but if it backfires, it can really work against you. I'll give advice that I think Jennifer and Naomi would say. One, make it about yourself, not about others. Two, it's about highlighting everyday common things that we all can experience rather than differences that people have.

And if you do those two things, your humor is more likely to not offend and perhaps even be funnier. I was thinking back about something that I think you said in the book, which was that a lot of people think structure is negative, but you think it sets people free.

Absolutely. And I'll just share something interesting that reminded me of budgeting, which is someone once said people think of budgets as restrictive, and I see them as making life easier. I wonder if there are other elements of life where structure is perceived as being restrictive. But with a budget, I know a lot of people who use budgets as a way to say, well, now I have the permission to spend $20,000 a year on a vacation or $4,000 a year on electronics, whatever it is.

And because you budgeted it for it, it actually feels freeing to be able to use it. I thank you for that, Chris, because I'm going to-- if you don't mind, don't trademark that, because I'm going to steal that example, because I am often in situations where I have to say that structure is freeing.

And I have a few examples I always use, but I'm going to use that budgeting one. The one I often use is I interviewed somebody for the book who is a playground designer. She designs playgrounds for kids. And I said, it seems counterintuitive to me. Why not just have an open field, an open space, right?

Kids are really creative. And she said that's not true. She said kids actually have more creative play, play longer, and others observing the play see it as actually more interesting and fun when there is a play structure, because it gives them a starting point. It gives them an anchor point.

If you put kids in an open field and say play, she said ultimately what they end up doing is using each other as a play structure, and people get hurt and in trouble. So it's an example of where the structure actually sets you free. I'll give you another one I often use.

Many people know about improv, improvisation, right? And you think, well, these people are just making it up on the spot. Well, they are generating new ideas, but they're following very specific rules. The one everybody knows of is yes and. No improv person worth their salt is going to go on a stage and say, oh, I'm grandma.

And the other person is going to say, no, you're not. You're grandpa. Absolutely not. They're like, hi, grandma. How are you? Did you make me some cookies? So they adopt and adapt. They follow rules. Yes and. Make your partner look good. Sometimes do nothing and just let the scene play out.

There's particular rules, structure that they follow that allows them to be creative. So I love your budgeting example. It's exactly the same point. I think the same thing is true, by the way, if you need more examples about sports. The reason sports are interesting is because there are rules.

And if there were no rules, it would be a lot less interesting to watch, because it would just happen. And it'd be chaos, right? You wouldn't know, is that good or bad or whatever? Yeah, no, I agree. I think the rules are important. We just went back and forth on a lot of different things.

We could have been more clear and concise there and just closed off the messaging one. So let's talk about focus and how people can bring that in to kind of close this out. Yeah, so many of us say more than we need to say. Growing up, my mother had this saying.

I know she didn't create it, but she said it all the time to me. And I try to live by it. Tell me the time. Don't build me the clock. Many of us are clock builders. We say more than we need to say, either because we want to rationalize and demonstrate the thought process we went through, or we want to show how smart we are.

People just want to know the time. In the military, they have the notion bottom line up front. Tell me what's the crux of what you're saying. So the question becomes, how do you do that? Well, you do that first by reminding yourself of what's most relevant to the audience and focus your messaging on that.

That in and of itself will make it more clear and concise. Also, even if it's spontaneous, you should think about what's my goal in this situation. And a goal to me has three parts. What do I want people to know? How do I want them to feel? And what do I want them to do?

Know, feel, do. So when I go into a communication or a situation where I think I might be asked to be spontaneous, I think, what's the critical thing I want people to know? How do I want them to feel? And what do I want them to do? And that, again, causes me to focus my communication and my messaging.

If I don't have a goal, I'm likely to say a lot more than I need to. So being focused on the needs of the audience, having a clear goal helps you focus your messaging. And then we have to prioritize what we say, the words we use. We often use very big words when we could use simple words.

We often repeat ourself more than we need to. So we begin to train ourselves how to actually be more efficient in what we say. And here's where paraphrasing can help. After you read something or listen to something, ask yourself, what was that about? And truncate it. You're training your brain to synthesize and prioritize.

You can look at your text messages. We don't think about this, but texts are a form of spontaneous communication. Many of us don't sit there for hours thinking about how to respond. Go back and look through all your texts and think, how could I have said that more efficiently using words?

Obviously, using emojis changes the whole thing. But the point is, you can train your brain to be more efficient, but you have to practice at it. And you can practice by summarizing things you've heard, paraphrasing things you've said in the past, just as an exercise. I always ask people tactics and things that they could do while someone's waiting in line.

Here's a great one. If you're waiting in line at the grocery store or something, you could just look through and mentally practice paraphrasing things you've said in the past, which will help you in the future. I would actually challenge you to go one step further. When you're waiting in line at the grocery store, there are all those magazines.

Look at the stories of those magazines and just, if there's one that you know the story about, paraphrase it. So you use it. That's truly spontaneous. And while you're there, you could make small talk with the person in front of you. So you're practicing multiple things simultaneously. Paraphrase the story to the person.

Have you-- Oh, there you go. You're setting context, right? You could say, oh, you know this story as well. We've set some shared context. I'll paraphrase it. If you don't, we'll practice it all. That's right. So you're turning a grocery store into a classroom. I love it. Somehow I have a feeling that part of what you've taught is how to turn almost any scenario into a place where you can practice these tactics.

It sounds like-- Yeah, so much so that my two teenagers say, stop it, dad. There's two things that we didn't hit on that I want to come back to. So one, you briefly mentioned AI. And as you started saying paraphrasing, I was thinking, well, gosh, that seems like something that software does.

Does that take away from my ability to learn? There's a browser I use called Arc. And now any time you hover over a link, the AI in the browser will just summarize the page before you even click on it, which is great. But now I'm wondering, how can any of these tools help in this process?

Well, so I think the jury is still out on the impact of generative AI on communication. I, for one, am really interested in it. On the podcast I host, Think Fast, Talk Smart, I actually interviewed ChatGPT before it had its own voice. We ran its printed results through a voice synthesizer.

And it was really interesting to hear what it thought about communication, at least in the context of spontaneous speaking, beyond serving up potential prompts for you to respond to. I think it's a good way to train our brain on how to synthesize. So I might speak to it or type to it something I might want to say, and then have it summarize it and paraphrase and say, oh, that's interesting.

It's really interesting what it's indexing on and what it's focusing on. So it's a way of training your brain to see how it works. It's like a flight simulator. You do it and you say, oh, OK, now I look at my results and see how I could have been better or done worse.

So I think AI can definitely be a tool that helps us in our spontaneous communication. Do you think it could help with structure? Could I say, here's a thing I'm trying to do. Could you give me more structure? I'm right now thinking about how I might implore some of these lessons.

I have actually tested that out. I taught ChatGPT what, so what, now what. And then I typed in a paragraph, and I said, give this to me in what, so what, now what. And it did a pretty good job. It wasn't perfect, but yeah, you can do that. And then you can see it.

I'm using this as a teacher in my classes. I love to give students examples. I hope you've noticed that I try to give lots of examples when I teach. And so I like to give them examples. But it takes time, especially when they're written examples. So I'll actually use generative AI.

I'll give it a few examples and say, create a couple others with these variations. So I go from having three to now nine. And now my students see lots of different options. So there are ways that it can help, certainly. And then one other one, which is a total aside, is around filler words.

And I'm curious, as someone who actually looks at transcripts of my own conversation and sees the usage of um, you know, like, that's up, any thoughts on how to remove them or reduce them in your vocabulary? So the first and most important is awareness. You can't change something you're not aware of.

And there are actually tools that can help you. There are apps you can get on your phone. One I like a lot is called Like So. And what it does is it activates your phone's microphone when you turn it on. You can code in what words you want it to listen to.

And then it vibrates, bings, or beeps every time you say one. So then you're aware of it. And you can look for patterns. There's another tool that plugs into your browser for any virtual tool like Zoom, Meet, WebEx, et cetera. And it only records your voice, not the other voices.

And it'll highlight when you say it. So you can look for patterns. For example, I worked with somebody just the other day. And we saw that before he says a complex technical term, he will typically say um. I didn't notice that as somebody who just listens to him. I just heard a lot of ums.

But the tool helped me see a pattern. And now he knows every time before he says a technical term to be more vigilant. And he's reduced the number of ums considerably. So awareness building is one of the best ways to do it. And here's an example of where I think technology really can help.

- And what was the browser tool or the-- - Oh, it's called poised.com, P-O-I-S-E-D.com. - Oh, wow. I'm so glad I asked that question. I didn't know these tools existed. I'm gonna check them out. This has been so great. I feel like I have a whole list of things to go practice.

I'm gonna go back and re-listen to this because I did try my best to both stay present and not take notes. But now I wish I have. Where can people get more and go deeper? - Well, thank you. So first and foremost, I encourage people to listen to Think Fast, Talk Smart.

It's a podcast all about communication. Short form, 20 minutes. Lots of information I think will help people. mattabrahams.com, great place to go. All of my resources. I have a ton of free stuff out there to help people. I'm a big user of LinkedIn. Would love to connect with people that way.

I really appreciate Chris, the conversation. I loved your comments and I'm going to borrow your budgeting example. Thank you. - You're welcome to have it. It is not trademarked. Thank you so much for joining me. - Thank you. - Wow, that is definitely one of the episodes where I know I'm gonna be going back and listening myself, taking notes so that I can put a lot of what we discussed into practice.

Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Next week, I've got a whole episode dedicated to open enrollment. So if that's something that you happen to be going through already and you wanna hold off on Wednesday, I'm gonna go through everything that I know, covering all kinds of plans, terminology, how to pick, how to think about the entire process.

So stay tuned for that. And if you need to get in touch, podcast@allthehacks.com. Thank you so much for listening. I will see you next week. (upbeat music) (whooshing) (birds chirping)