200. Four Keys for Focused Communication: Live Lessons from Our 200 Episodes

[00:00:00] Matt Abrahams: It's celebration time, and when I celebrate, I like to invite the world, literally. I'm Matt Abrahams and I teach strategic communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to this extended live episode of Think Fast Talk Smart. The podcast recorded in honor of our 200th episode. Jenny Luna and I hosted two live events to celebrate the show's anniversary. Now I invite you to listen into the highlights where I share some thoughts on how to make your communication engaging and focused along with answers to questions from our listeners around the globe. It was especially exciting to be joined by two premium members live on video, so let's get to it. Here's Jenny. 

[00:00:47] Jenny Luna: Good morning or good afternoon. Good evening. Welcome to this live episode of Think Fast Talk Smart. I'm Jenny Luna, the founding executive producer, and we are so excited to get into our content and our Ask Matt Anything for today. Thank you so much for being here. I'd like to bring Matt on to get started. So without further ado, please welcome your host of Think Fast Talk Smart, Matt Abrahams. Good morning, Matt. 

[00:01:15] Matt Abrahams: Good morning, Jenny. Thanks so much for being here. Can you believe it's 200 episodes? This is amazing. 

[00:01:22] Jenny Luna: Yes. I remember when we pushed publish on episode 1, hoping that maybe 10 people would listen, and now we have people again, Argentina, France, Kentucky. It's so exciting to have hit this milestone. 

[00:01:36] Matt Abrahams: We need to do a world tour and go visit all of these people. It's amazing. There are people from all over the world. Thank you all for tuning in today and for listening to the podcast. 

[00:01:45] Jenny Luna: So Matt, are you ready to get started? I think people are ready to hear what you're gonna share today.

[00:01:50] Matt Abrahams: Absolutely. So thank you Jenny, and let's go ahead and get started. Welcome to this live version of Think Fast Talk Smart, the podcast. And this is our 200th episode, so let's make sure that we sit back, relax and enjoy learning about how to put mind over chatter. These are lessons and best practices that we've taken from our guests across all of our episodes to help us be more focused. The reality is this, many of us are constantly being bombarded with information, requests for our time. We all need to focus our attention. In fact, I believe attention is our most precious commodity in the world today, and we need to make sure that we engage our audience so we get their intention. To me, engagement is nothing more than sustained attention.

[00:02:50] How do we get that attention and how do we keep it? And in order to do that today, we're going to talk about all the ways in which we can help our audience to focus on our message. Focus is critical to getting the attention and engagement that we need. And to do this, we're going to cover four major concepts. Concision, relevance, accessibility, and precision. And with each one of these, I'm going to introduce what the concept is all about. I'm gonna give you an example that I've come to learn through our guests or some research that I've done, and then finally make some suggestions that you can implement to help make sure that your communication is focused and engaging.

[00:03:30] So let's get started. Concision is all about making sure that you are tight and focused in your message. Many of us, when we communicate, we ramble, we say more than we need to. Now, those of you who've been listening to the podcast for a while know that my mother has a really famous saying that I try to live my life by. Tell the time, don't build the clock. Many of us become clock builders when we communicate, either because we're discovering what we want to say as we say it, or we want to show the world that we know so much. We must be focused. We need to use the fewest possible words we can to get the information across. In a very noisy world, being concise is what can cut through that clutter.

[00:04:20] We have to think about what is the least amount of information that we can convey to help get our point across. Many of us, especially when we create slides, think it's all about how much can we put on to help the audience, and in fact, it's more about how much can we take away. This is something that became very clear to me when I interviewed Hilary Price. Hilary is a friend, she's an undergraduate colleague of mine and she is an amazing comic strip author and artist. She writes the Rhymes with Orange comic strip and it is amazing to read her funny and often insightful work. Now, many of you are listening in and aren't able to see what I'm showing, but I'm showing a one panel comic, and that's what Hilary does.

[00:05:04] She has to get her entire story across, make her point, make us laugh, in one panel. And what she does to help her do that is she comes up with an initial idea, she pairs it down to be as simple as possible, and then she tests it out to see if it works. So what I'm showing on the screen that some of you can't see is she had this idea of, wouldn't it be funny if we turned a snail shell into a recliner, a chair? So she toyed with lots of ideas that would get at the punchline, that visual image of a snail reclining. Snails move slowly. Why would they need to rest and recline? And what she ended up coming up with after testing it with several people is this notion of two snails reclining in their shells, watching a stream of other snails go by with their briefcases on their shells.

[00:05:53] And one of the snails reclining turns to the other and says, isn't retirement great? Every time I see this comic, I get a little bit of a chuckle and it reminds me how important it is to start with the one idea, pair it down, test it out to help. And therein lies the advice. You wanna make sure that your messages are simple and clear. You want to test them with others and ultimately make sure that your bottom line is upfront. In the US military, they instruct all of their communicators to BLUF. Bottom line up front. Make sure it's clear and it's noticeable. If you've ever been driving down a freeway, a motorway, and seen a billboard, you need to be able to look at that billboard and understand what it says very quickly.

[00:06:42] When the bottom line is upfront, it can help you. So we are concise by making sure that our messages are clear, we are focused, we test them, and we think about what is the least amount of information I can put to get my idea across. So concision is key, but so too is relevance. If you've been listening to the podcast, and I know many of you have for a long time, you have heard frequently our guests say, it is important to make sure your content resonates with your audience. It's relevant, it has some meaning to them. They say it in lots of different ways. Be audience centric. It's about them, not you. However it comes out, it's critical to make your information relevant. We pay attention to things that are important to us. 

[00:07:29] So as a communicator, you need to make sure that your message resonates and is made important for your audience, which means we have to understand who our audience is. We have to take the time to think about their needs. Most of us, when we communicate, we focus on what we want to say. Instead, it's all about what does the audience need to hear? It's not about what you want, it's about what they need. So we have to do some thinking about who they are. We have to understand what's their knowledge level. All of us listening to this now have been in a situation where we have had somebody talk about something that we either didn't know a lot about or we knew already everything they were saying. In either case, it's very uncomfortable. 

[00:08:15] If I already know it, I'm bored. I'm wasting my time. If I don't know it, I'm panicked. I need to learn it. So we need to target our messages to be relevant and hit the sweet spot of what people know, and then we can scaffold and build from there. We also have to think about what are our audience's concerns, hesitations and resistance. We know for ourselves that when we listen to somebody, we are constantly filtering what they're saying through our beliefs. We might be saying, that doesn't make sense, or that's not feasible. It costs too much. So when we are communicating, we need to think about our audience's areas of concern and resistance. And then finally, we need to think about what motivates our audience. We have known for a long, long time in social science that if you understand your audience's motivations and connect what you're saying to those motivations, they're much more likely to listen and follow through.

[00:09:08] So we have to take time to think about our audience. And then finally, we need to make sure that we leverage emotion. We connect through emotion. I make something relevant for you, salient for you by invoking emotion that's appropriate in the moment. One of the most fascinating conversations I had when I was writing my book Think Faster, Talk Smarter, is I interviewed the gentleman who's in charge of all Lego manual writing. Many of us have built Legos at some point in our life. I to this day when I'm really stressed out, we'll still put a Lego kit together. It's much cheaper than therapy and it's got just enough focus for me to get in that flow state that we've actually done an episode on before. And in talking to the person in charge of Lego manuals, and by the way, if you've ever seen a manual, you'll remember there are no words, it's only images.

[00:10:01] He told me two things that were fascinating. First, before you can ever write a Lego manual. You have to spend at least a year, sometimes a year and a half, learning about your audience. A Lego manual designer can tell you the difference between what a 6-year-old can do and 8-year-old can do. They've studied to that level of detail and because they know the audience so well, they can craft manuals that really resonate and are helpful and not distracting. And then the other thing that I found so interesting. They design their manuals to have emotion in them. And you might be thinking, emotion? It's just an assembly set of instructions. If you think about it, if you've ever built a Lego model, you know that you could make every single page, every single step, the same number of pieces in the same number of moves.

[00:10:51] But what they found is people aren't that excited to get through building the model if every step is the same. So instead they build emotion. Some of the steps they make very easy and you can do it quickly and see the results. Others, they have more complex moves. They make it so it's a little more challenging. So as you go through building Legos, you're having an emotional experience, which makes it relevant and motivational. Who knew that you could learn so much about communication from building Legos? So what are the take home messages here? It's important to make something relevant that we first do our reconnaissance, reflection, and research. We need to take the time to know who our audience is, which means we might have to ask them, take a survey, talk to people who know them, maybe even cyber stalk them, check out their LinkedIn profiles, look at their company bios. 

[00:11:43] Maybe they post blogs or sub stacks. Go check that out to give you insight into what's important. Another great way to make things relevant is to connect with people through using their names or inclusive language, like the word "you". When we hear our name, we pay attention more. Never forget growing up, whenever my teachers would say, it's time to do math. I would think they were talking to me because my name is Matt and sounds similar. When we hear our name, we pay more attention. It's more relevant. So too, when we use the word "you". Next time you're on a virtual call, Zoom, Team, Meet whatever, I want you to use the word "you" more frequently and you'll see people snap to attention and look at the camera. And you can do things easily, like say, as you might be wondering, by using specific language that calls people out, you make it relevant. 

[00:12:34] And finally, build curiosity. Human beings are curious. If I get you interested and provoked to learn more, it makes it relevant. We want to learn. So anything you do like asking questions or setting up a puzzle or taking a poll and people wanna know the results, that builds curiosity. So it's all about concision, making it focused and relevant. And then we have to think about accessibility. Many of us, when we communicate, we talk about complex issues and ideas. Some of you are technical and dealing with technical coding, for example. Some of you are in finance dealing with numbers and others are doing scientific work. Complexity is critical in the work that you do, in the communication that you have, so we have to make sure that we can make that content accessible without oversimplifying it.

[00:13:29] We don't want to dumb it down. We want to make it so people can understand it. If we oversimplify, we actually do ourselves an injustice because when people think, oh, this is simple, it's not that hard, and then they come to realize the true complexity, they can question your credibility. They can get frustrated. So we need to find ways to make it so they understand. And there's a big barrier in our way. We all suffer from the curse of knowledge and the curse of passion for anything that we spend a lot of time talking about. So we need to make sure that we overcome that curse of knowledge and that curse of passion. The only antidote is empathy and curiosity. You have to be curious to understand what does the person know about what I'm talking about? What could I help them learn so they understand it at the same level I do. So your own curiosity is critical, and then you have to be empathetic enough to change and adjust your communication.

[00:14:30] Many of us just start on the path of communicating and don't change. We need to adjust and adapt to make sure we make our content accessible. And when we do so, we have to make sure we avoid acronyms, technical terms and jargon. That language can distance ourselves and make our concepts more difficult for people to understand. One of our guests, a friend and a colleague at Stanford Business School, Huggy Rao, shared on our podcast this notion of jargon monoxide. It suffocates your communication. Make sure that you define your terms and your acronyms. That helps people understand. I learned a lot about this when I talked to an editor at CliffsNotes.

[00:15:14] Now, some of you might be too young or perhaps in places around the world where you're not familiar with CliffsNotes. Way before we had generative AI, if you needed a little help understanding something that was complex or maybe you were a student who didn't do all of your work, not that I'm admitting that happened, you would refer to CliffsNotes and they would give you a summary of what you needed to learn and give you detailed examples to help you understand it at a deep level. And what CliffsNotes did is they utilized several techniques that all of us can use to be more effective in our communication. They would use things like analogies, comparisons, if you're learning about Romeo and Juliet, comparing it to maybe a sporting event where you had two adversarial teams can be really helpful.

[00:16:00] You can diagram things out. If you look at CliffsNotes, especially the versions today that are online, they have lots of diagrams to help you understand stories and plots and mathematical thinking. You can backward map, start at the end and explain how you got there. That's a really important way to make complex ideas more accessible. And then finally, you can show it. Show a video, show a picture, draw a chart. All of these are ways to help us make technical concepts more accessible. I challenge each of you to really take a moment to reflect on the language you use and some of the things that you communicate and think about how can I make them more accessible so my audience can focus and really get the meaning of what I'm saying.

[00:16:46] So with concision, relevance and accessibility, we make it pretty far on our way to being engaging and focused. But there's one more stop on our journey. We have to be precise. Precision is all about being exact. We really have to help our audience focus by being exact in what we're doing. And the best way to do that is to have a clear goal. I believe all high stakes communication must be goal-driven. To me, a goal has three parts, information, emotion, and action. In other words, what do you want your audience to know? How do you want them to feel, and what do you want them to do? Know, feel, do. The knowing is the information you want to get across, tailored to the amount of complexity as well as what's relevant for your audience.

[00:17:32] The feeling we've already talked about, the ability to help people feel draws them in, makes it relevant. Do you want people curious or concerned? Do you want them excited or fear of missing out? Do you simply want them feeling confident? Think about that emotion. That helps you be precise. And then finally, in most communication, we strive towards action. We want people to do something. Make sure you are clear on what that action is, so much so that you could measure to make sure it happened. Helping you be precise is to help set expectations. Think of yourself as a tour guide when you communicate. Tour guides are very precise about where they're taking you and where they're not taking you.

[00:18:12] That way you can focus on the journey. You need to be the same when you communicate, set expectations of where you're going in your content so people can relax and know what's coming. Then if you've ever heard the podcast or read anything I've written, you know, I believe structure is really important. Many of us in our communication, we just ramble and itemize information. We just list things out. As human beings, we are not very good with lists. As a matter of fact, I can only remember three things when I go to the grocery store. If I need to buy more than three, I have to write it down. We just don't remember lists. Structure replaces lists. Our brains are wired for structure. 

[00:18:53] Structure is just a logical connection of ideas. This notion of being precise was made very clear to me when I spent some time talking to the people who produce and edit The Dummies books. You might be familiar with these books. These books cover a wide range of topics, everything from how to code and use technology, to how to travel and enjoy a particular city or country. The Dummies books are designed very specifically to help you precisely find your way through them. They use what they call way finding. When you get a Dummies book, you can get through it in many different ways. You can go through it from page one to whatever the page ends. Or you can go through it by following a certain path that icons make, or certain expertise levels that you have.

[00:19:39] So there are lots of ways to get through the material. They precisely take you on the journey you need to have with their material. They don't take you through everything. So what does this mean for our communication? When you communicate, make sure you not only have a clear goal, as we talked about, but that you have themes that relate to that goal. Think of it this way, if you were ever going through a job interview, you wanna make sure that the person interviewing you precisely comes away with a clear idea about who you are and why you're a good hire. So once you have your goal, create themes that represent ideas and concepts you want to get across, and make sure that those are clearly stated.

[00:20:19] So you, if you're interviewing, might want to demonstrate that you're very adept at learning new skills. That's a theme. And then you can support that theme so they precisely understand exactly the skills that you bring to the table. Now once you have the themes defined, you have to structure that information. Remember, structure is a logical connection of ideas. My favorite structure in the entire world is three simple questions. What? So what? Now what? The "what" is the information you're getting across. It could be your update, could be your answer to a question, could be your feedback that you're giving. The "so what" is why is it important and relevant to the person you're speaking to?

[00:20:57] We talked earlier about how important relevance is. And then the "now what" are the precise exact steps you want to have follow next. Maybe it's, let's set up another meeting, or ask me certain questions, or let's get into some brainstorming. What? So what? Now what? is a great tool to help you be precise. And when it comes to starting your communication, you wanna make sure that you start with impact. Start like an action movie. Many of us have a preamble or a buildup that distracts from the precise thing we're trying to get to. Think about how action movies start. With action. Now, I'm not saying jump out of a plane or crash a car. I'm saying ask a question. Tell a story. Give a startling statistic.

[00:21:42] Take a poll. These are always that you can precisely and exactly get your audience's attention so you can introduce them to your themes based on your goal and through your structure make your point very clear. So taken together, concision, relevance, accessibility, and precision, help us to more effectively engage and focus our message. All of us can benefit by having engaging, focused communication. And it is my hope that you take away some of these best practices and apply them to your communication so you can definitely think fast and talk smart. Jenny, I'd love to have you join me back and let's take some questions from our global audience.

[00:22:28] Jenny Luna: We're gonna kick this off with a question from our premium member, so I'd like to invite Aaswad Kulkarni to come ask his question. He's from Poon, India. Thank you so much to all of our premium members. 

[00:22:41] Matt Abrahams: So great to be joined by you. Thank you so much for joining us. 

[00:22:45] Aaswad Kulkarni: Thanks a lot, Matt, and first of all, congratulations to you and your entire team for such a significant milestone. It's great to have 200 episodes and I'm sure there'll be 2000 more, hopefully. 

[00:22:55] Matt Abrahams: Oh wow. I hope so. Yes.

[00:22:57] Aaswad Kulkarni: And thanks for helping me cross off one item of my bucket list to be a part of a podcast. So many a times I find myself in a situation where time is limited. So what are the key ingredients for an impactful elevator pitch? And also is there a change in the ingredients of the recipe when the audience, the receiver of the pitch, might already know me versus they don't know me, I'm new to them. So love to hear some thoughts on that. 

[00:23:24] Matt Abrahams: Yes, thank you for that question and there's so many important points there. So let's start with being time crunched. I think what we've just discussed, this notion of concision, relevance, accessibility and precision really are key when you're time crunched, so we really have to be focused. Now, if you have time to plan your pitch, then you can really think through what's the most essential ways that I can get my point across. If it's spontaneous, you get in the elevator and you happen to be with somebody who's curious, maybe an investor, maybe a leader in your organization who wants to help support you, and you haven't planned it out again, think to yourself, what's my goal? What is most important and relevant to this person?

[00:24:06] What's the bottom line that I wanna get across? So even in the moment, you can do that focusing. So we have to get down to that focus through the techniques we've talked about. Certainly it matters based on who the audience you're speaking to. If they know you and you have some credibility and some track record with them, you can start in a different place. Perhaps you remind them, you might say, remember back in that project we worked on a long time ago? Well, I have an idea for a new project. So connecting what they know about you to where you want to go forward helps you. You don't have to build up that credibility.

[00:24:40] For somebody who's new, who doesn't know you, you might have to establish the credibility either through your position or through the things that you have done. What's critical when you are establishing your credibility, and we've talked about this before, is you want to show, not tell. You don't just wanna recite what's on your LinkedIn profile or resume. You want to tell stories that demonstrate your expertise rather than just itemizing. And then finally, you ask how do you pitch effectively? I have a pitch structure that I really, really like. This structure is different than what? So what? Now What? where you have to think of those categories. This is actually a set of sentence starters.

[00:25:18] You just finish these sentences and you have a pitch. 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. If you finish those sentence starters, you have a good pitch. So let's say I'm trying to get somebody to sponsor the podcast, which is something we do try to do. I might say, what if you could help people all around the world improve and hone their communication skills, so that we hear the diverse voices and ideas from people who have really important things to say. 

[00:25:54] For example, imagine helping people learn to be more persuasive and influential so that they can get their ideas and things that they want, and that's not all. By teaching people these skills and connecting through a global podcast, you build a sense of community that can help further people's learning. Simply by saying, what if you could, so that, for example, and that's not all, you can quickly put a pitch together. So Aaswad, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you also for being a premium member and taking advantage of the extra content that we provide. Jenny, do we have some other questions? 

[00:26:33] Jenny Luna: So we would like Bozhena Orekhova from Silicon Valley to come on and ask her question. 

[00:26:39] Bozhena Orekhova: Hi. 

[00:26:41] Matt Abrahams: Hello. 

[00:26:42] Bozhena Orekhova: Congrats on the big milestone and thanks for having me as a premium subscriber. Here's my question. What's your take on the best way to build a stronger vocabulary? Is it lots of reading the way to go? And are there any kind of books or genres you recommend? 

[00:26:59] Matt Abrahams: Thank you so much again for being a premium member, for asking a really important question. You know, it's not just for non-native speakers who need to learn to use more words or improve their vocabulary. It really is for all of us. A couple ways to think about doing this. One, if you wanna become a better writer, you should read a lot. If you wanna become a better speaker, you should speak a lot and watch others who speak well. So by observing others and listening to their language, not to copy and mimic, but to get good ideas for what words might be appropriate. That said, what's most important is that you get your meaning across, and you don't always have to use just the perfect word. A lot of my students, especially those who are newer to English, in my case, 'cause they're taking a class in English, they feel like they have to say it exactly right.

[00:27:49] There is no one right way to say things. They're better and worse ways. So rather than fixating on just getting the right word, focus on getting the meaning across. Yet it never hurts to bolster and build your vocabulary. I'll tell you a way that I've built my vocabulary. My mother loves to play the word game Scrabble, and ever since I was a little kid, we would play Scrabble. Still to this day, we play Scrabble, and in doing so, I've learned a lot of words. So find an activity that's fun for you, that uses words. Maybe it's doing a crossword puzzle or reading some kind of material you're interested in, and use that as the vehicle to help you learn more words. Thank you for that question.

[00:28:29] Jenny Luna: Yes. We've got one from Maji who's joining from YouTube, and I love this question because we have some episodes that talk about it. What's your advice for communicating numbers, figures, percentages. How do you craft a compelling story around that type of content? 

[00:28:45] Matt Abrahams: Yes. We recently had Miro Kazakoff on and earlier we had Chip Heath on, and both of them talked very specifically about how to leverage numbers. It starts by understanding where your audience is at regarding the concepts and numbers you're talking about. If they have a deep understanding of the numbers, then you can actually start at a different place than if they don't understand it. So it's not just about getting the numbers across, it's about understanding how people will relate to those numbers. And both Chip and Miro shared with us that it's the stories you tell around the numbers that help people.

[00:29:20] There's some good evidence that says, it's hard for us to remember numbers. What helps us is if we put it in context, put it in a story and context here means two things. One is a story, so help people understand, what does this number mean? So if I give you a revenue number, what does that mean? Help me understand the deals that were closed, the products that were released that got us to that revenue number. Plus you need to give context. Help us appreciate what that particular number represents. I once worked with a very senior leader of an international bank, and as part of his presentation, he shared how much money went through that bank every day, and he shared an astronomical number. My bank account will never see a number that big.

[00:30:04] And I said, what does that number mean? And he did some quick math and he said, it's roughly 25% of the world's money. And I said, say that. Do you see how that gives context? You say the big number and then you give the context, and that helps us to understand. So it starts by knowing your audience. You then have to show through story what those numbers mean, and you have to give context so people can appreciate them. Finally, when possible, use charts and graphs that are appropriate and understandable by visually representing the information, appropriately. You can do a lot with data representation that can confuse people, but if you help people see it, it makes it stick. So thank you for that question. Really important. Most of us deal with data. 

[00:30:46] Jenny Luna: Thank you Matt. And if you are interested in more episode 49 and episode 189 tackle communicating with numbers. Okay. Are you ready for our next question? 

[00:30:58] Matt Abrahams: I am. 

[00:30:58] Jenny Luna: Sometimes you're always put on the back foot by a certain person in a meeting, so how do you communicate back in that scenario?

[00:31:07] Matt Abrahams: Sometimes people will say things that are surprising to us, challenging to us, unexpected, and we can be on that back foot where we're really caught off guard. In that moment we feel incredible pressure to respond right away, and we don't need to. We can take a beat. We can say, let me think about that for a second. Or we can ask a question to get more detail. What makes you think that, or how did you come up with that idea? We wanna avoid being accusatory and escalating if this happens to be a conflictual situation, but by asking a follow-up question that gives you a little bit of time to think, to address your emotion, which likely you'll have in that moment.

[00:31:46] Similarly, you can do a paraphrase. A paraphrase simply acknowledges what you've heard. It doesn't mean you agree, it simply means I heard you. And in that moment you can actually begin formulating your response. Paraphrasing is a lower order cognitive skill, which is just a fancy way of saying, we can do it, and begin thinking about what we want to say next. So in those moments where you're really thrown back and you might have strong emotion about it. You need to give yourself just a fraction of a second to collect your thoughts, to take that deep breath and respond. 

[00:32:21] So again, you can ask for the time, you can ask a follow-up question and, or, you can paraphrase. That can help you get back on track. And I guess the last thing I would say is in many situations you can always respond later or add to your response. We feel like we have to do it all now and we have to do it all right. If somebody really throws you for a loop, you can respond and then follow up with another conversation, an email, et cetera later. It doesn't all have to be done perfectly in the moment, but I certainly know how awkward that can feel. I have been in those situations often. 

[00:32:57] Jenny Luna: Makes me stress just thinking about it. Our next question is from Dolores and she asks if you have recommendations on improving our confidence when speaking. 

[00:33:06] Matt Abrahams: Oh my, absolutely. Dolores, thank you for asking that. That is one of the very first things I began studying. Even as an undergrad, I did research and published some work on managing anxiety. This was something that was very real in my life and I have committed myself to trying to help people really become more comfortable and confident. If you go to FasterSmarter.io, that's our podcast website, and go to resources, there are a whole bunch of resources there on many things, including English language learning content, including how to be more influential and negotiate better, but there's a whole section there dedicated to managing anxiety and becoming confident, so definitely take time to look at that.

[00:33:47] We have many, many episodes on the topic as well from experts like Kelly McGonigal, Andrew Huberman, Alia Crum. These are world leading experts on how to manage anxiety and how to be more confident when you communicate. Let me share just some really quick ideas. Whenever it comes to managing anxiety, and I notice I use manage, I don't believe we can ever truly overcome our anxiety in communication. Those of us who study this believe it is innate to being human. We see it in every culture. We see it develop around the same time in people in every culture. It's part of being human, but we can learn to manage it. And when you go to manage that anxiety and to become more confident, and those two are related, the more anxiety we have, the less confident we are.

[00:34:32] The more ways we have of dealing with our anxiety, the more confident we can become. You have to take a two-pronged approach. You have to manage symptoms and sources, symptoms of the things that we physically display and sources of the things that initiate and exacerbate that anxiety. Everything from taking a nice deep breath all the way through rethinking your approach to being more present oriented and connected. Lots of resources in our podcast episodes and lots of resources at FasterSmarter.io. Please take the time to get better at your confidence so that you can really deliver your messages in a way that resonates and you feel good about. Thank you for that question, Dolores. Really important. 

[00:35:13] Jenny Luna: I just wanna add, Matt, that something that I'll never forget from the podcast is when Kelly McGonigal, a guest and a collaborator of yours, said, when I feel anxious, it means that I care. And that was always a great reframe that I use. It means I'm passionate, it means I'm excited, and if I can use that reframe, I care. And that's why I'm feeling anxious. I still think about that today. 

[00:35:35] Matt Abrahams: Kelly is wonderful, and that advice is great. We can actually see our anxiety is a sign that we are excited, that we're focused, that this is important for us. When I teach, when I give presentations, when I do this talk we're doing right now, I get nervous and that tells me this is important and it helps me focus. So you're absolutely right. 

[00:35:55] Jenny Luna: Alright, our next question is from Marcine and they ask, I occasionally deal with stakeholders who go too far on a tangent or change topics. How can I politely bring the conversation back on topic? 

[00:36:07] Matt Abrahams: Marcine, thank you for bringing that question up. Many of us struggle with this, where we have an agenda sometimes, literally, sometimes just in our head, and we end up on these tangents when we bring our agenda or ideas to other people. I believe the most useful tool for getting things back on track is paraphrasing. It's a way of interrupting somebody who speaks too long. It's a way of redirecting people who take things to the side or off kilter. A paraphrase simply highlights something that they've said. It's not a complete repeat of what they've said.

[00:36:41] It's highlighting some key idea, acknowledging it, and then pulling it back to where you want to go. So imagine we're having an implementation discussion, we're bringing some kind of product or service to the market, and we're talking about the process and all the things we need to put in place in order to be successful. And you take us on a tangent by starting to talk about some other company launching their product and it really doesn't directly fit. You might be talking about how they set up a special marketing campaign and going into that campaign, and I might just interrupt with a paraphrase and say, marketing is certainly very important.

[00:37:17] I appreciate you bringing that up. The next item on our agenda talks about how we're going to communicate this to the market. So, it is the politest way I know to stop a conversation's direction and pull it back. You acknowledge something of value and then you link or bridge back to what you're saying. And you might be thinking, gosh, Matt, that's really rude. The reality is, if you're leading that meeting and you let the tangent go, you're actually being rude to everybody else. You're taking their time in a direction that they didn't expect. So while perhaps being rude to one person, even though I don't think it is being that rude, not paraphrasing actually is rude to the other people.

[00:37:55] So the best way I think, to get things on track is to use a paraphrase. By the way, you should have a clear agenda upfront so you can always refer back to it. Having an agenda anchors where the conversation and communication is going. If you don't have an agenda, then going off on tangents is expected. That's what brainstorming and ideation meetings are all about. They have a goal, but they don't have a specific agenda. You don't want all of your decision making meetings to turn into those kind of meetings, so thank you for that important question Marcine. 

[00:38:28] Jenny Luna: We have time for about one more question and then I'm gonna jump in with a question as well, if you don't mind. This one's a little fun. It's from a LinkedIn user who asks, if you could interview anyone in the world, time is no issue. Who would you wanna have on the podcast? 

[00:38:44] Matt Abrahams: Oh, there's so many people I'd love to interview. I've spent a lot of my time thinking about spontaneous speaking. If I could interview one person, I would love to interview Robin Williams, the comedian. He was just so amazing in his ability to think fast and talk smart, and do so in a way that was topical, timely, and incredibly funny. When I was a teenager, I had the good fortune to see him perform live. I am not kidding you. My stomach hurt for two days afterwards, and I think I only got a third of the jokes. And I'm convinced that much of what he did was just in the moment, he just responded to what was going on. So I would be fascinated to learn his thoughts and process to really understand. 

[00:39:29] Jenny Luna: Okay, Matt, I wanna know what you're most excited about. What's coming up for Think Fast Talk Smart and for you. 

[00:39:34] Matt Abrahams: Thank you. And Jenny, you and the team behind the podcast have been so incredibly important in getting us to where we are. And I think we're all excited about expanding our community. The community of Think Fasts Talk Smart is global. People will get together like book clubs around episodes and talk about episodes. I know places around the world where people come together and practice their communication with each other, and they simply met through Think Fast Talk Smart. So I really want to help expand the community and give people opportunities. We're exploring new and different ways of bringing content to people. 

[00:40:08] Our latest episodes, we did a miniseries on spontaneous speaking. The first episode dropped today. It's a different approach. It's not just an interview format, so I'm curious to see how people respond. And ultimately we're trying to extend and expand our premium offering to really give people the in-depth tools that they're interested in. So I see only bright future ahead. I love this community. I love learning and helping others to learn, and I look forward to the input and feedback from everybody who takes advantage of Think Fast, Talk Smart. And from the bottom of my heart, I am deeply grateful, to not only the people that help bring the show to all of you, but to all of you who listen.

[00:40:47] Jenny Luna: Great. Matt, this has been such a fun Ask Me Anything episode. I love getting to watch you do what you do live. 

[00:40:54] Matt Abrahams: Thank you, Jenny, and thank you for being a critical part of all of this. I encourage everybody to share, think fast broadly with their friends, their family, their coworkers. We'd love to hear from you. Thank you so much. 

[00:41:09] Thank you for joining us for this special 200th Think Fast Talk Smart, the podcast episode recorded live as part of an AMA, Ask Matt Anything. To hear another live episode with listener questions please listen in to episodes 78. This episode was produced by Katherine Reed, Ryan Campos, Aech Ashe, and me, Matt Abrahams. Our music is from Floyd Wonder. With thanks to Podium Podcast Company. Please find us on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. Be sure to subscribe and rate us. Also, follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram. And check out FasterSmarter.io for deep dive videos, English language learning content, and our newsletter. Please consider our premium offering for extended Deep Think episodes, AMAs, and much more at FasterSmarter.io/premium.