328. Ask Matt Anything: Don’t Let Your Communication Fizzle at the Finish

[00:00:00] Matt Abrahams: How you end something often can be as important, if not more important, than how you start. My name's Matt Abrahams, and I teach Strategic Communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to this special Ask Matt Anything inside our learning community of Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. I am thrilled to be here with Think Fast, Talk Smart Learning Community members from around the world and sharing this with all of our listeners and viewers as we come together to think about important communication skills. In a few minutes, I'm going to take some questions from those joining us, and then try to give some answers that are helpful and useful.

[00:00:44] But before that, I want to talk about how we end our meetings and presentations. Many of us just simply run out of time. The most frequent way people end meetings and presentations is something like this. "I guess we're out of time. Thanks." Not the most efficient or effective way to end. In fact, ending is really important. The way people feel at the end of an experience colors the way they see that entire experience. Think of this. If you have an amazing holiday, a great vacation, everything is perfect. Yet on the flight home or the drive home, there's a lot of traffic, things are late, your luggage goes missing. How do you feel about the whole experience?

[00:01:31] Often, that will negatively color how it happened. And the same is true in our communication. If we end in a way that is off-putting or goes too long or throws too much additional information at people, their experience of our entire meeting or presentation could be more negative. So we need to really think about how do we land the plane? How do we end in a way that is effective and efficient? And the efficient part is really important. As soon as people get a sense that you're ending, they begin to check out. Their attention begins to get distracted. We need to stay focused. I believe the most efficient way to end a communication is to rely on the goal that helped you focus the whole communication in the first place.

[00:02:16] Now, I am a huge fan of having a goal. And to me, a goal has three parts, information, emotion, and action. What do you want the audience to know? How do you want them to feel? And what do you want them to do? If you structure your entire communication around your goal, you should be able to invoke the goal, speak the goal at the end to wrap up. So I might start with gratitude. I'm a big fan of gratitude. Thank you for your time. I hope you're leaving this meeting or presentation knowing this, feeling this way, and willing to do this. Now, you might not like those words, so change it. But do the same thing. Highlight the information at the highest level.

[00:02:55] Convey the emotion that you want people to have, and then give the call to action, the specific steps that you're asking for. When you do that, you are more efficient in how you end. Because the reality is, as soon as you signal you're ending, actually think of this. Think of your own behavior. Say you're on a Zoom, a Team, a Meet, and the meeting organizer, the person running the meeting says, "In conclusion," what is your pattern behavior, your habit? Like Pavlov's dogs, you go up to exit meeting, pull up your calendar to see where you need to be next. So as soon as somebody signals ending, we begin checking out and moving to the next thing. So you have to be efficient. Leveraging your goal makes sense. If you don't like the goal as an ending, that's okay.

[00:03:38] Maybe you started with a story and you want to return to that story at the end. I love that kind of book ending where you start and end in a similar way. Still make it very efficient. So endings matter. In my experience, most people focus on the beginnings and assume when I get to the end, I'll figure it out. You need to think about how you end. It is as important, if not more important, than how you start. I just came back from helping people at a conference, and several of the people, as I was helping them prepare, had, let's just say, less efficient and effective endings than they could have. And we really worked on it. So it's top of mind for me and hopefully will be helpful for you.

[00:04:19] Happy to take questions about that, how we end, but I'd love to take questions about anything. This is an Ask Matt Anything, an AMA. I do have a few questions that people sent in in advance who couldn't be here, and I'm happy to start with those as well. Kenji, I see you have a question. Can you just tell us your name, Kenji, and where you're calling in from? 

[00:04:37] Learning Community Member 1: Hi, Matt. I'm from Seattle. I'm glad to join this meeting. My question about ending, so I'm gonna be in a meeting in a week, and then I want people to join my community. So I will show my QR code. Here is our way to join, and then you have to wait for a while, right? And then what should I say during that time? And then I want to add something after. 

[00:05:00] Matt Abrahams: Yes, absolutely. So in your case, the call to action is for people to take a picture of the QR code, so they can actually go to the site that you're looking for. And the question is, what do I do when I put that up? 'Cause we know people are gonna fumble with their phones and have to figure it out and click on the links. So I do believe saying something would be really useful, but make it something that's not critically important. So that's not the time to give out the pass code or the discount code because that's a lot of cognitive stress for somebody who's trying to take a picture or click on a link. But I might reinforce something that I've already said. So you're starting a community. Congratulations. I've done that as well with the help of a team, and it's a lot of work. I might reinforce the value of the community.

[00:05:42] So I might say, "Here's a QR code so you can take advantage of all the goodness that we've been talking about. Go ahead and take a picture, save the link. And as you're doing that, just remember this is a community where you can..." And then you summarize some of the things that you've said before. So you're not giving net new information. It's harder to take net new information in when you're being asked to do a task. So that would be my advice. And good luck on the community. Community, I think, is so important, and we've heard so many great things from those of you who are part of our learning community, so thank you. What other questions do we have from those of you joining? Would love to take some questions. Excellent. Cheri, please, can you tell us where you're calling from?

[00:06:22] Learning Community Member 2: Yeah. Hi, Professor. I'm from Chicago. I'm a grad student, and like Kenji, I've also started a community on my own. And so I did a first event, and it was so difficult for me, but it was really good experience for me to do that. And at the end, I kept repeating the same sentences because I'm nervous because it's an online event. And because I'm nervous, I just start repeating the same thing. So that is one thing that I have trouble, ending the sentences. 

[00:06:50] Matt Abrahams: Okay, excellent. So again, congratulations on starting a community. When we get nervous, we tend to fall into patterns, and repetition of what we're saying is a very common pattern that people fall into. Let me start by saying repetition is not a bad thing. Repetition can actually be very helpful. Saying the same thing over and over again reinforces that point. So repeating isn't a bad thing to do. Now, I want to just take a tangent there. I just said the same thing four times purposely to demonstrate it's not that bad. But if it's bothering you and there are other things you want to say, then we need to break that pattern. And if what you are repeating is a declarative sentence, then a great way to do that is to switch the modality.

[00:07:35] Ask a question. So if you find yourself repeating the same thing, think to yourself, "What's a question I could ask here?" Even if the question is on the same topic, the fact that it is a question breaks the pattern for you and sounds different to the person who's listening. So we have to have at least enough awareness as we're communicating to notice, okay, I've got some repeating here. Let me change up. So instead of a declaration, I might make a question. If I'm using questions, I might make an exclamation, right? So change the type of communication, and that will often break the pattern. That said, another way is, again, I'm not a big fan of memorizing. I am a huge fan of practicing, and having a structure can help.

[00:08:17] So if you're using my favorite structure, what, so what, now what, and I find that I'm repeating myself a lot in the what, I just encourage myself to move to the so what. So keeping my eye on where I'm taking my audience through my structure is another way to break that pattern. And by the way, it builds confidence either by changing the modality or moving to the next step because you feel like you're in control. It's like, "Oh, I'm repeating myself. I'll just ask a question. Now I feel confident because I just took care of a challenge I saw myself confronting." So Cheri, I hope those two bits of advice can be helpful for you.

[00:08:50] I'm going to read one of the questions that came in through the community's discussion. It's a question that comes from, I think it's Halev. And Halev asks, "Matt, I hear you talk a lot about engagement, how you pull people in and engage them. I struggle with engagement. Are there certain engagement techniques that seem to work better than others?" So Halev, engagement is critical. We live in a world where attention is our most precious commodity. Our attention is constantly being pulled in different directions. As a communicator, we want to focus that attention, but not just in the moment. We want to sustain it, and sustained attention is what I call engagement.

[00:09:32] And there are four primary ways to do that. The first is physical. Get people doing something physical. When people do something physical, their brain will follow their body. So what does that look like? Maybe I take a poll. I have people raise their hand. Maybe I have people write something down. If I'm virtual, I have them do the reaction button or type something into the chat. Physical engagement gets people involved Contrast that to mental engagement, cognitive engagement. Two major ways to do that. One is to ask questions. When you ask people questions, the brain becomes much more active than when you just tell them something passively. So get more engaged through asking questions.

[00:10:15] When I teach, I never say, "Today we're going to cover three topics." I say, "Today we're going to answer three questions." And then the other way to do it is to use analogies, comparisons. When you use analogies and comparisons, it helps your audience to leverage the way we learn. We learn new things by comparing them to existing things. Third is linguistic, language. If you can use people's names. Have you noticed I've tried to use people's names today? When we hear our names, we get more involved. You can also use what I call time traveling language. I can take all of you into the future.

[00:10:49] I can say, "Picture this. Imagine what it would be like. What if...?" Those phrases get you to see it in your mind's eye, and that gets you more involved. And then finally is any shared experience. If I can highlight a shared experience. This is where humor comes in. If I can make you laugh, you can make me laugh, that's a shared experience. Or if I refer to a keynote or the all-hands presentation, that's a shared experience. So physical, mental, linguistic, shared experience are the major ways to engage people. So Halev's question is, what are the most effective? And it really varies by person.

[00:11:26] My mother, for example, was an elementary school teacher. Physical engagement is her name of the game. I mean, when she teaches, when she talks, she gets you doing things, and that works really well for her. For me, it's more that mental and the linguistic engagement. Most of my presentations, if you watch them online, will start with some kind of time traveling language. So everybody has to find their own, but it's important to know the different paints you have on the palette: physical, mental, linguistic, shared experience. I hope that helps, Halev.

[00:11:59] Uh, we've had a couple new people join us into the community live. Thank you for coming and joining today. Curious if anybody else has a question. I know Cheri has another one. Do you have another question, please? 

[00:12:08] Learning Community Member 2: Yeah. Thank you. So when I'm talking to people, I usually tend to talk, like, work stuff. So I'll just give some background to it. I'm a student assistant in my university, and other student staff will be talking to professional staff, like all kinds of stuff, and I only talk work stuff. So even though I try doing that, it seems like I'm not able to involve much. I'm not really sure why. And when I'm talking other stuff other than work stuff, my confidence seems little bit low.

[00:12:39] Matt Abrahams: Thank you. Many of us can feel less confident when we're communicating about things that are not our expertise or that are more chit-chat, small talk, just conversation. I want to give you some suggestions in a couple different ways. First and foremost, small talk, chit-chat, non-work communication is actually really important. It's how we build relationship, trust, and connection. It requires that we do some work. Small talk requires big work, but it has big payoffs as well. So the best thing to do if you are uncomfortable with that is to go in not thinking, "I have to add a lot of value. I have to say something that's really important and interesting." Your job really is just to keep the conversation going.

[00:13:23] So asking questions, making observations, paraphrasing what others are saying, those are all great ways to contribute to a conversation, to keep it moving forward, without having to put a lot of pressure on yourself to add something of tremendous value. So is there an observation in the environment that you can highlight like, "Wow, it's colder in here than it was in the other room," or, "Everybody seems to be wearing a similar color." Is there a question you could ask? You know, "That keynote was great. What did you take away from it?" By using these tools or paraphrasing what others have said, say, "Hey, that point about this is really important."

[00:13:59] That's all you've done. You've just summarized a point. So those are ways of making contributions and feeling a little more comfortable moving the conversation forward. And from that, you then build confidence. So in the moment, using those tools can be really helpful. Additionally, you can actually prepare for some of these situations. So if you know you're going to be at an academic event and you know there are mixers after or you're gonna be meeting people during the break, think to yourself, "What are one or two topics or ideas that I would love to bring forward?" Not that you've scripted the conversation, but that you have an idea.

[00:14:35] Again, it's like having a goal for a presentation. It gives you directionality. And then finally, you know, what's really interesting is you can use AI and LLMs to practice, to test this. There's the chatbot of me in the learning community. Others can get it if they're not in the learning community. And you can actually say, "Hey, Chat Matt, I would love to work on my small talk skills. Let's role play an academic conference during a break." And I, through the chat tool, will actually talk with you, and you can practice. And then you can ask the tool, "How did that go? What could I have done differently?" And it'll give you advice. So you can actually practice this kind of stuff, not to script it, but to just feel more comfortable. So I hope that helps. Thank you.

[00:15:18] We have a question here from Sylvia. Sylvia is really curious about, "When I have some strong feelings and emotions about something, how do I express that without sounding overly emotional?" This is hard for me. I am a very passionate person, but sometimes being so passionate gets in the way of what I'm passionate about. So one thing that really helps me is to recognize it. Say, "Oh, I'm getting really charged up here," either positively or negatively, and naming it, saying, "I'm getting really excited," or, "This is really upsetting me."

[00:15:53] What we know from mindfulness is that when you name an, an emotion, you actually give yourself a little bit of space between your experience of the emotion and the emotion itself, which allows you to do something. So first is to learn to recognize it and name it. So say to yourself, "This is me being upset. This is me being really excited." The second thing to do is to figure out a way to downregulate. So for me, what I do is I tell stories. Now, I'm not saying that's the right way for you, but find some communication technique that you can use.

[00:16:26] So when I get really amped up, I'll tell a story. And for me to tell a story, I have to set the context, I have to give the scene, I have to think about what's important. And it's not that I'm devaluing my emotion, but I'm putting my emotion to work to help you understand it through storytelling. Rather than just come at you with the intensity of like, "You should do this because it's the best thing ever," tell a story about it, or give a testimonial of somebody else who's had a benefit, or share some statistics that can add value.

[00:16:54] So Sylvia, when you find yourself in those positions, first acknowledge it. Say, "This is me feeling this way." And then second, think about how can you use a tool like a story, a testimonial, some data to convey that emotion. But in so doing, it will downregulate your emotion and reduce the intensity that your audience or the other person you're communicating with will see it. So thank you.

[00:17:20] Allow me to simply say thank you to all of you who have joined us live today. Thank you for being here. Thank you for being part of the learning community. And thank you to those of you listening who are learning community members and those of you in the broader Think Fast Talk Smart audience. Please check out our learning community at fastersmarter.io/learning. The learning community has lots of cool things, quests for specific topics like persuasion, anxiety management, some video lessons, discussions, and lots of other things, including the AI chatbot I talked about. Thank you all for your time. Thank you for supporting Think Fast Talk Smart, and let's all together think fast and talk smart.

[00:18:01] Thank you for joining us for another AMA episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. To learn more on a variety of communication topics, check out our extensive back catalog of episodes on your favorite player or at fastersmarter.io. This episode was produced by Katherine Reed, Ryan Campos, and me, Matt Abrahams. Our music is from Floyd Wonder, with special thanks to the 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, TikTok, and Instagram. To join us for our next AMA, please consider joining our Learning Community, where you will also get video lessons, learning quests, book talks, and my AI coach. Sign up at fastersmarter.io/learning.