Matt Abrahams: Mastering Communication

Transcript

Des Dearlove:

Hello. I’m Des Dearlove, the co-founder of Thinkers50. Welcome to, sadly, the last episode in the current series of Thinkers50 Radar webinars, celebrating the most exciting new voices in the world of management thinking. In January, we announced the Thinkers50 Radar List for 2025, 30 Rising Stars in Management Thinking, and we’ll be hearing from another one of them today. But as you know, we like to make these sessions as interactive as possible so we really want to hear from you. So please do let us know where you are joining us from and put your questions in the chat box. This year’s Radar List is brought to you in partnership with ATD, the Association of Talent Development, and our topic today is how we can all develop our talent for communicating, especially when we’re put on the spot.

My co-host today as ever is John Coné. John has worked in talent development … I still can’t believe it. He tells me he worked in talent development for more than 50 years. During that time, he served as a chief learning officer, a vice president of HR, and on the boards of non-profit and for-profit learning companies and organisations, including ATD. He currently serves as the catalyst of ATD’s Chief Talent Development Officer Group. John, great to see you. I can’t believe it. I’m sort of sad that it’s our last one for a little while.

John Coné:

As am I, Des. It’s wonderful to be here with you, but I am very excited to introduce our guest and that’s Matt Abrahams. He’s a leading expert in communication. He has decades of experience as an educator and author, a podcast host, and a coach. He teaches popular classes in strategic communication and effective virtual presenting. He received Stanford GSB’s Alumni Teaching Award in recognition of his teaching of students around the world. Matt is a sought-after keynote speaker and communication consultant. He’s helped countless presenters improve and hone their communication. His online talks garner millions of views and he hosts a popular and award-winning podcast, Think Fast, Talk Smart the podcast, and he’s the author of Think Faster, Talk Smarter: How to Speak Successfully When You’re Put On the Spot and another book, Speaking Up Without Freaking Out: 50 techniques for Confident and Compelling Presenting. Welcome, Matt.

Des Dearlove:

Yeah, Matt. Welcome and congratulations on the Thinkers50 Radar recognition.

Matt Abrahams:

Des, thank you so much. John, great to be here with you. I am honored to be part of the Thinkers50 Radar.

Des Dearlove:

I think we’re all really excited about learning to be better communicators because I think we all have room for improvement, at least I certainly do. But tell us a little bit about your backstory. What drew you to focus your work on communication?

Matt Abrahams:

I can remember back to when I was a young boy how critical and important communication was. Two foundational stories, really. When I was about seven, my father was reading the newspaper, and this is back in the day where people would actually hold paper in their hands. And I heard him chuckling from behind the paper and I said, “Dad, what’s so funny?” and he called me over. He was reading the comic strips and there was a comic of a father with his arm around his son, looking at the store that the father clearly owned. And across the store was the line, “Going out of business,” and the caption was, “Someday, son, this will all be yours.” And my father thought this was really funny and I didn’t understand. As a seven-year-old, I’m like, “What do you mean? The store’s going out of business.” And my father explained to me that it was a ploy. It was a trick to get people to come into the store because they thought they’d get a good deal. And I began to think, “Huh. Communication can actually influence people.”

And then shortly thereafter, within the next year, my mother instructed my brother and I to gather up all of our toys that we weren’t playing with anymore and we were going to have a yard sale, a garage sale. Where I grew up, everybody had garage sales. And my mother said, “We have to stand out,” so she insisted that my brother and I, when we make the sign, we misspell the word garage. And if you insert the letter B in the middle of garage, you get garbage. So while all the neighborhood was having garage sales, we had a garbage sale and we sold more that day than anybody else, and my mother to this day believes it’s because our signs stood out as different. I think people thought we were stupid and they’d get better deals. But yet again, within a year’s timeframe, it was reinforced for me how communication, how words can influence and manage people. And in fact, ever since then, I’ve been fascinated by it, studied it academically, apply it in my coaching and my teaching. I’m fascinated by how we help each other through communication.

Des Dearlove:

We are going to talk about the book. Sorry. John. But we’re going to talk about the book and we’re going to definitely talk about the podcast. But you are doing it, aren’t you? You’re doing that thing. You’re telling stories. I love that about communication is that when someone’s doing it, if you’re not careful, they’re doing it so well that you don’t realise how effective, particularly, narrative is.

Matt Abrahams:

Right.

Des Dearlove:

It’s one of my favourite subjects. Can you just talk to that a little bit?

Matt Abrahams:

Sure. So we’re getting a little meta, yes. So yes, I believe communication is operationalised empathy. It is how we connect with people. And as a species, human beings are wired for story. We’re not good with lists and itemisations of things. Stories, things with beginning, middle, and end, things with affect and emotion, that’s what draws us in and that’s what allows us to connect. And so if you can, in your communication, engage in a structured way that invokes emotion and is immediately relevant, that’s how you can be effective in your communication. So it’s all about connection. It’s all about understanding your audience and making your content relevant.

The story behind Think Faster, Talk Smarter

John Coné:

Matt, this notion of telling stories, of making it part of the story, is that why you wrote the book initially?

Matt Abrahams:

Well, so I wrote the book because I had been working for a while on how to help people speak in the moment. The deans at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business where I teach, I’ve been there 15 years, came to me about nine years ago and said, “We have a problem. Our amazingly bright students are really struggling responding to cold calls.” You remember when the professor would look at you and say, “What do you think?” and you had to respond in the moment? And they knew I studied communication. They said, “Can you help?”

So I did a deep dive into lots of different fields of studies, psychology, anthropology, sociology, even neuroscience and improvisation, and created a methodology that since then, every year we offer to our first-year MBA students and it helps them feel more comfortable and confident. And after seeing the value that it brought to our students, I wanted to find other avenues and ways to get that information out. So the book was born out of a very specific need that not only our students have, but all of us have. Because if you think about it, most of our communication is spontaneous. It happens in the moment. Somebody asks you a question, asks you for feedback, you make a mistake, you have to fix it. And yet there isn’t a lot out there on how to help people feel better in those situations.

Des Dearlove:

Okay, so we’re going to talk a little bit about that because I do think it’s an absolutely fascinating talk. I’ve got so many questions for you. You wouldn’t believe it. But anyway, you write that one thing you hope the book will do is myth-bust the idea that speaking well on the spot requires natural talent or is innate, because I think a lot of us think that some people are just born with this gift of the gab and they can just go into communication mode. Particularly, I think we tend to associate it with extroverts. Many of us are actually introverts and struggle with it. Can you explain why this is where the myth lies?

Matt Abrahams:

Yeah, for exactly the reason you’re saying. We see people who do it well and we assume that because we feel awkward, uncomfortable, and nervous in those situations that there’s something special about them. But communication is a skill. It’s like any other skill. With preparation, with practice, with some reflection, you can actually get better. Now do some people start with an advantage? Sure. There is research that suggests if you’re a little more extroverted, you might feel a little more comfortable doing it if you have experience.

One of the things that got me fascinated in this topic is my last name. My last name is Abrahams, AB. I always went first in school. I am a teacher. I know that sometimes teachers can be lazy. We just go in alphabetical order. So a lot of my life, I have always been put on the spot. So eventually, I became more comfortable with it. So yes, it is a skill you can learn. The irony is that you can prepare to be spontaneous. Just think of an athlete. Athletes do lots of drills to prepare themselves so when they’re in the midst of their sport, they can respond in an agile, appropriate way, and we all can do that as well.

John Coné:

Well, let’s talk about the podcast if we can. I’ve had some exposure to it, and was able to listen to several. You have such an incredible variety of people that you talk to, people that I wouldn’t even think of in this space. Has any one of your guests ever surprised you with an insight?

Matt Abrahams:

Many of my guests surprised me. I feel so honoured to interview the people I do. And the nice thing about talking about communication, which Think Fast, Talk Smart is all about communication, is communication touches so many aspects of life. Let me share one or two insights that really change the way I think about things. I had a neurolinguist on. Her name is Valerie Fridland, wonderful person. We’ve become friends. We were talking about filler words, ums, uhs, likes, and I means. And from my entire life, from an academic perspective, even just from a lay perspective, I have always thought that we wanted to get rid of these things, that they’re bad, that they signal uncertainty. And Valerie, based on her research and the knowledge of her field, actually convinced me that filler words can have benefit. They add value.

Now you don’t want to have too many that they become distracting, but that was a fundamental change and it changed the way I approach my own communication and the way I coach and teach others. It’s not about eliminating, it’s about reducing them and leveraging them for what they can do. For example, filler words actually hold your place in a communication. So if I’m not quite done letting an um or ah out, it signals I still have something more to say. So that was one example.

I had from somebody in Des’s part of the world, Julian Treasure, on. Julian is an expert in listening and he said something that, again, fundamentally changed the way I approach things. I have always coached people to be in service of your audience, be audience-centric. But he said it so beautifully, he says when he speaks, he thinks about, “What is the listening I am speaking into?” What is the listening I am speaking into? I think that’s just poetic and reminds us not only that we need to be focused on our audience, but that listening is a critical component of communication. So those are just two of many fundamental changes to my communication that have come from the amazing guests I’ve had on Think Fast, Talk Smart.

The curse of knowledge and the curse of passion

Des Dearlove:

Another interesting area, and one that I’ve encountered throughout my career as a journalist, is striking the balance between simplifying or unpacking something that’s very complex in order to make it understandable or comprehensible to a wider audience. I mean, that’s often what a journalist is doing. Particularly in the kind of thought leadership world, we are taking quite complex ideas and trying to unpack them. I mean, you often have to distill complex ideas in the podcast into practical, accessible insights. It’s getting that balance right. I always remember a university professor saying to me when I was trying to help them communicate, “You’re trying to dumb my ideas down,” and I said, “I’m really not. I’m trying to dumb them up actually. I’m trying to get them out in a way they’d be meaningful to a wider audience than your colleague at Harvard and your colleague at Oxford.” If you’re going to talk to a mass audience, you’ve got to talk in a different language. But how do you get that balance right?

Matt Abrahams:

I really appreciate this question and I like the idea of dumbing something up. So I don’t believe in simplification. I believe in what I call accessibility. How do we make complex topics accessible? Most of us on the topics we communicate suffer from both the curse of knowledge and the curse of passion. We know too much about what we’re speaking and we care too much about it. And because of that, it can lead us to go too deep too quickly, to use acronyms and jargon, to make assumptions. So first and foremost, we have to remind ourselves that when we communicate, we’re in service of our audience. It’s not about what we want to say, it’s about what they need to hear, which means we have to take some time doing reconnaissance, reflection, and research into who the audience is to understand where we can meet them and how we can meet them.

The only antidote to the curse of knowledge and the curse of passion is curiosity and empathy. You have to be curious enough to understand where your audience is at and empathetic enough to change what you say and how you say it. Now that said, there’s some very specific tools you can use to make things accessible. For example, deconstruct a complex idea. Break it down into its constituent parts. Perhaps you backward map. Start at the end. “Hey, here’s where we are. How did we get there?” Diagram, mind map things, use comparisons and analogies. There are a whole slew of tools that we can use to help us make content that’s very complex, accessible. But first and foremost, we have to understand that it’s about the audience and where they’re at, not where we want them to be, and we have to help scaffold to get them. So I like your idea of dumbing it up, but it’s not about oversimplifying by any means.

John Coné:

Matt, because we tend to use the word “audience,” it projects this notion that we’re talking about public speaking. You’re at the front of a room. There are a lot of people.: That’s your audience. But you’ve said that spontaneous speaking is much more than just public speaking. Could you talk a little bit more about that?

Matt Abrahams:

Absolutely. So most of our communication is not in front of a broad public. It’s one-on-one or it’s in a small group. Small talk, for example, is a classic example of spontaneous speaking. So communication happens all over the place. There are people who study the communication we have with ourselves. So the ability to speak confidently, the ability to speak authentically and in an empathetic way are critical for all our communication. If you were to keep a communication log where you just documented for a day or a week all the different communicative interactions you have, you would find that the vast majority of them are interpersonal. They’re one-on-one. When I was in graduate school, that’s what I studied because I was so fascinated by the frequency of this.

I’m getting fascinated now by the interpersonal communication we have with AI, right? Many of the things that we are doing now is with technology. Much of our communication is that way. And interestingly, at least initial research is saying that having a conversational approach, using some of the same techniques we use to speak spontaneously with humans actually help make the AI interaction more deep and you get better results when you have a conversation, rather than treat AI interactions as a search engine prompt. So this type of communication is ubiquitous. Now we, as shorthand, use audience, which as you say implies many people, but I can have an audience of one.

Des Dearlove:

No, that makes sense. But I’m going to take you the other way to talk about public speaking as well because I’m sure I’m not alone in having the fear and concern about public speaking. I think it is quite wise. But I think I heard you say once that 80% of people admit to it and the other 20% are probably kidding themselves or lying. So I think it’s there in all of us. I think it’s a human thing. I mean, I was interested in your point about athletes preparing. When you’ve got to speak in public, I find myself sometimes getting caught between, “I’ve got notes,” and then when I stand up I feel like I’m not allowed to have any notes.

Matt Abrahams:

Right.

Des Dearlove:

So then I’ve got this horrible thing that I’m going to forget the flow of it and I don’t know whether it’s acceptable to have a piece of paper in front of me. You see people using iPads and phones and things. What’s the protocol there? Are we allowed to have a few cheats if we need them?

Matt Abrahams:

There is so much I could say in response to that question, Des, so let me answer the finite question that you asked, which is can you or should you have notes? I am not averse to having notes as long as they are not distracting and too much. So the full sheet of paper or the full tablet, I think, is distracting. But if you have just your phone or a small note card to refer to, I think that’s totally acceptable and fine. In some ways, I think it demonstrates, “I really want to make sure I get my message to you.” Now it’s how you use it as well. If I’m clutching it like a shield that protects me from my audience or I’m reading it word for word, that’s problematic. So rest assured, having some notes available is fine. And in fact my students, especially early in our course, use notes when they have to do presentations and they find that they don’t rely on them as much as they expected. It’s sort of a safety blanket that they have.

Des Dearlove:

Absolutely. Exactly that.

Matt Abrahams:

And I want to take a step back and I’ll just briefly touch on this, and if we want to explore it more I’m happy to go deep. My first book was all about anxiety around speaking. Speaking Up Without Freaking Out was all about techniques to help manage anxiety around speaking. You are 100% correct. Those of us who study this believe it is human to be nervous speaking in front of others. It has evolutionary origins, we believe. We see it in every culture that has been studied and we see it develop in kids when they become young teenagers. There’s a big spike that continues throughout their life. So there are all the signs and signals show us that this is innate.

Now that said, there are things we can do to manage our anxiety. It’s not about overcoming it. It’s about managing it. And it boils down to two things: managing the symptoms, what you physiologically experience, and the sources, the things that initiate and exacerbate our anxiety. So anxiety is normal and natural. The people who you see as confident have worked on it or have found ways to display confidence behaviors still while being nervous. It is a ubiquitous thing and it is something that we can learn to manage.

John Coné:

Matt, I noticed something in the notes. We do have a number of people joining us today who are in the talent development or training profession.

Matt Abrahams:

Sure.

John Coné:

And they’re asking about this notion, “Well, is delivering a training program a different thing in terms of the level of preparation and how you use notes?” and even this notion of people who basically put all their notes on the visuals and use that to get through. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Matt Abrahams:

Well, I am very happy to see my training brethren participate today. When I was in the corporate world, before I came back to academia, I started as a corporate trainer. I ended up running learning and development for a number of software companies, hiring lots of trainers and curriculum developers. So I know this space, at least I did several years ago. So I believe the type of communication we’re talking about applies absolutely to the training space. When you teach though, you have to break things down in a different way. You have to make things digestible, modular. Using notes as a trainer, as a teacher, I think is completely appropriate and helps make the content more accessible.

Now John, you’re right. Many of us, not just trainers, not just teachers, but many of us rely on our slides as a crutch and I think this is a big problem. I believe slides are in service of your audience and in service of your message. They’re not for you as a teleprompter. So you have to ask yourself one question: Do slides add value to my audience? And if they do, then you use them. And how do you decide if they add value? Do they simplify, amplify, or clarify your message? If they do one of those things, simplify, amplify, or clarify, then you should use them. There’s this notion that, “Well, I want to send things ahead or leave them behind so I should create slides.” Great. Create a document, but it should be different than what it is in the moment you project.

Our brain has one primary area for processing verbal information, that’s written or spoken. And when I put up a slide with a lot of words on it and I’m speaking at the same time, I’m asking my audience to multitask. I’m actually working against my goal of them understanding. So if you do create slides, fewer words, more visuals, and they should be in service of what you’re saying. So yes, using notes as trainers is, I believe, totally fine. And thinking about how you use slides appropriately is critical, both for the training community and anybody who creates and leverages slides.

Des Dearlove:

That’s a good question from Erika Lucas. It’s great to see Erika here. She’s in the UK, just up the road from where I live. Erika has asked, “I’m fascinated by the ‘think faster’ aspect of this. How do you overcome the problem of ‘delayed thought?'” I know this one. “Meaning you think of the bright idea or the right response once the meeting is over,” or it’s moved on, the conversation’s moved on. And obviously, she’s only asking for a friend.

Matt Abrahams:

Obviously, of course. So my work is Think Fast, Talk Smart. The book is Think Faster, Talk Smarter. I’m on brand. I want to say several things about this thinking fast and talking smart. First and foremost, it’s about pattern recognition. If we can do that work, that practice, the repetitions talked about, we are more available to notice patterns. For the book, I interviewed somebody who is a real-time, graphic meeting note-taker. Many of us have seen this where in the midst of a meeting, somebody’s drawing out what’s being said, so they’re taking notes visually. Very difficult task. You got to pay attention. You got to connect ideas. You have to draw at the same time. How do they do it? They do a lot of preparation work in advance. They think about what’s going to be said, the type of flow. They prepare themselves to identify the patterns that will happen in the moment. And this helps them, just like an athlete does.

So part of thinking faster is preparing yourself for the patterns that might unfold, but not being rigid and locked into them. There’s a flexibility if things go a different way. Similarly, you have to be present-oriented. One of the things that gets in our way of responding right away is our judgment and our evaluation of what we’re saying before we even say it. So there’s this notion of being present and being ready to respond, rather than being in our head judging and evaluating, and we can talk a lot more about that in the mindset approach. So that’s thinking fast.

The talking smart part has to do with leveraging structure. When you have to speak, you have two fundamental things to accomplish. One, you have to think about what to say and how to say it. If you leverage a structure, a framework, that helps you with the how you’re going to say it. It’s like a recipe. I’m a lousy cook. Believe me, neither of you would want to eat my cooking. But I’m a better cook when I follow a recipe. So you can think fast and talk smart by preparing in advance for the patterns that you might get. Become very present-oriented. Think about and practice certain structures, frameworks. A great example of a framework is problem, solution, benefit. If any of you have ever pitched an idea or watched a television advertisement, you’ve seen a problem, solution, benefit. Issue/challenge in the world, the product or service resolves it, and then there’s some benefit to you. Having that structure or recipe helps me then more quickly and agilely respond. So with practice, you can think fast and talk smart by using these techniques.

The six-step methodology for thinking faster and talking smarter

John Coné:

You have actually written about a six-step method for talking smarter. Could you take us through those?

Matt Abrahams:

Sure. I’m happy to walk you through it and I’ll do so very briefly. But at the end of the day, the methodology for thinking faster and talking smarter is divided into two categories. It’s mindset and messaging. We have to have the right mindset to start and then we have to craft our messages. And we’ve talked about some of the components already, but let me run through them quickly. First and foremost, you have to learn to manage anxiety. If you are an overly nervous communicator, it makes life harder. So there are things that we can do, both managing symptoms and sources, very concrete steps. Taking deep breaths, thinking about canceling out some of the negative self-talk that we have, things we can do to make ourselves feel more comfortable and confident. That’s step one.

Step two, we have to get out of our own way. Many of us when we communicate, we want to do it right. We want to be perfect in our communication and that’s not where the focus should be. That actually makes it harder for us to communicate. That’s why memorising is so bad. When you create the perfect way to say it, you actually have less cognitive bandwidth to focus on what you’re doing. So we get out of our own way. It’s about connection, not perfection. Third, we have to remind ourselves that there is opportunity in these spontaneous speaking situations. Many of us feel threatened by them. When somebody asks us questions or asks us for feedback, we can feel very defensive. And if you change that mindset and see it as an opportunity to connect, to learn, to expand, that makes it easier for you. And then finally, the final part of mindset has to do with listening. Listening is so critical. Many of us listen just enough to get the top line and then we begin rehearsing and evaluating. You have to listen for the bottom line to understand what’s happening.

So when it comes to the four steps of mindset, it’s about managing anxiety, it’s about connection, not perfection, about seeing opportunity, not threat in the circumstance, and listening. And then we have to move to the last two steps, which are messaging, and we already talked about structure. Having a slew of structures available for different types of situations, like answering questions, giving feedback, making small talk, can help you. Not so that you sound scripted, not so that you sound robotic, but to give you a place to start. And then finally, many of us when we communicate, especially when we’re put on the spot, say more than we need to do. So the final step in messaging is focus. How do I focus so my message is clear and concise?

My mother has a wonderful saying and I try to live by it. “Tell the time, don’t build the clock.” And there are ways that we can be more focused in our communication. It has to do with making sure we say what’s relevant to the audience and we have a clear goal. If we do those things, our messages will be more concise. So there’s a lot in what I just said. If you do any of those steps, your spontaneous speaking will be better. And if you can do a series of those steps and perhaps all six, you will become more comfortable and confident speaking in the moment.

How to listen deeply, and gain – and sustain – people’s attention

Des Dearlove:

You’ve talked a little about listening. Again, it’s a really hard thing to do when you are already a bit anxious and you’re running the script that you’re running in your head when you’ve got to do, particularly when you’re speaking to a room. And quite often, we encourage interaction, but we don’t necessarily want interaction. We’re doing it almost going through the motions and someone asks something, which should make us go in a different direction. But actually and funnily enough, I was watching it happen earlier today, the speaker combated aside, and almost then the whole point was to engage and it’s created the opposite effect. So how can we listen more effectively and, I guess, be prepared to pivot?

Matt Abrahams:

Yeah. So again, several things to say. One being in the present moment, not in your head or on your script, helps you be able to be agile and adjust, and that’s where structure and this methodology helps. When it comes to listening, I think the single best way to train yourself to listen more deeply is to listen as if you are going to paraphrase. When we paraphrase, we listen in a deep way. Because a paraphrase to me is not just parroting back what somebody has said, but it is getting to the crux, the bottom line, not the top line. So we will listen more deeply when we actually think about paraphrasing what the person said.

Now we can speak the paraphrase or not. Speaking the paraphrase has a tremendous amount of value. And I don’t want to take us on too far of a tangent, but when you paraphrase, you signal. Not only did I hear you, but you validate that you heard correctly, because the person can say yes or no, and you validate the person. It is personally rewarding. It feels good when somebody demonstrates they listen and it is a foundational component of building trust and building relationships. So the best way I know to further develop listening is to listen to paraphrase. And now, Des and John, I have to tell you that whenever I talk about listening, my wife gets very upset because she says I’m a fraud. I still need to work on this myself and I do. And with the help of others, especially those that I live with, I am getting somewhat better at my listening. But it is critical.

One other thing you mentioned in that question, Des, which is important, is that engagement is critical. I believe the most precious commodity we have in the world today is attention. Getting people’s attention is hard. We are constantly distracted with our devices, with all of the opportunities in front of us. And what’s even harder than getting attention is sustaining that attention, and I define engagement as sustained attention. So it is a shame when somebody does what you just described, where there’s an opportunity for engagement and they brush by it. And that to me, I think, is really a tragedy because in that moment where engagement is possible, that’s where you can really connect. So I train my MBA students, the people I coach, we talk a lot about it on the podcast and in the books, seek out engagement. And there are many things you can do to bring about engagement.

John Coné:

Matt, I’d be remiss if I didn’t bring up a question that Ildiko asked in the chat and that is gender-related. Is your advice different talking to women compared to men?

Matt Abrahams:

So I’m going to extend this conversation even more. And Ildiko, thank you for asking the question. Communication varies based on context, culture, power status, gender. Certainly, there are differences. First and foremost, we have to assess what is contextually and culturally appropriate in any communication situation. When I talk about culture, I don’t just mean country of origin, although that’s very important. Different organisations or parts of organisations can have very different cultures. We’ve all worked in organisations where some parts are more open and collegial and other parts are more stiff and stifled. So yes, there are things that we have to think about. We have to think about the communicative norms, what’s accepted/expected in these interactions.

There are norms or expectations around gender and communication. Many of them boil down to differences in power and status, not just biology, but we have to be sensitive to it. A lot of the research suggests that communicative behaviours typically associated with women are incredibly valuable and important in communication. Listening, turn-taking, paraphrasing, concern over socio-emotional wellbeing. Again, these are stereotypes that tend to line up with what we see or people expect from women. Again, just stereotypes, but these are very positive and very helpful in organisations and in communication. So certainly, there are differences in terms of what would be expected and what would be advised, but again, these are changing and often have more to do with power and status than just biology.

Des Dearlove:

Interesting. I’m going to take you back to the “engagement is critical” point that you made before. Attention is very hard to get. Sustaining attention is even harder. And then tantalisingly, you said there are ways that you can do that.

Matt Abrahams:

Yes. I did that on purpose because …

Des Dearlove:

I know. It works.

Matt Abrahams:

Building curiosity is one way to get engagement.

Des Dearlove:

Having hopefully paraphrased what you said, I’m now asking you to share perhaps some of those techniques for creating engagement.

Matt Abrahams:

I was so hoping you would take the bait. Yes. So building curiosity is a great way to get engagement and there are many ways. It boils down fundamentally to three ways to get engagement. One is physical. Get people doing something physical. We’re having people today type into the chat. When you first started, you asked people in the chat to type where they’re from. That is a physical engagement technique. Other virtual techniques you can do: Use the reactions buttons, put people in breakout rooms, show a shared screen. When we’re in person, I can have you turn to the person next to you. I can have you write something down. I can have you do some kind of poll where you’re raising your hand. Where the body goes, the brain will follow. So physical engagement is one way to get people engaged. Do a stand-up meeting. There’s a lot of research that says when you physically stand and meet, you are more concise. You’re more clear. You’re more engaged.

I remember when I was doing some work at Google … I live in the Bay Area/Silicon Valley. Google is a spit away from me. They have these bikes and they’re fantastic bikes where I think it’s eight people sit around a circle in a bike, one person steers, so there’s a ninth person who steers, and everybody pedals together to get the bike to move. And doing that actually, they found that the meetings were more productive and more creative because you’re actually physically engaged in a way. So that’s one type is physical engagement. Second is mental engagement, cognitive engagement. Three ways to do this. We’ve already talked about one, storytelling. Human beings are storytelling machines. When I tell you a story, we connect in a way that’s very different if I just read you bullet points on a slide.

Second is asking questions. When somebody asks a question, your brain responds very differently, becomes much more active than when somebody tells you something. The person doesn’t even have to answer the question. It can be a totally rhetorical question. And then finally, analogies and comparisons are quite engaging. We learn in our life, throughout our life, through analogies. We compare what we know to what we don’t know. So if I use a relevant analogy … And that’s the key. It has to be relevant. Here in the United States we use a tremendous number of sports analogies. Hit it out of the park. It’s a slam dunk. If the people you’re talking to don’t know the sport, don’t know the analogy, it actually works against you.

I once had a student who, in the middle of a presentation, used the analogy to the game of cricket which, Des, you might be more familiar with than John and I probably are. And that’s what the guy heard in the room was crickets. We had no idea what the heck he was talking about. So you have to use relevant analogy. So there’s physical, there’s mental, and then there’s linguistic engagement. My favourite linguistic engagement tools are to take people into the future. I call it time-travelling language. I could tell you something or I could say, “Imagine what it would be like if,” or, “Picture this,” or “What if we could?” That language invites you to see it in your mind’s eye and you are engaged with it in a very different way than if I just told it to you. So using a combination of physical engagement, cognitive or mental engagement, and linguistic engagement are the ways that you bring people in and connect with them.

I would challenge anybody listening and both you, Des and John. If you look at any communicator that you admire and you create almost a bingo card of physical, mental, and linguistic engagement, you’ll be putting little ticks all the way through across what they’re saying because now you have the decoder ring to what makes their communication engaging. As observers and audience members, we just get engaged. We don’t think about the tools that people use to actually engage us.

John Coné:

Matt, can I ask you about something that we run into? Talent development professionals and other executives in organisations run into it all the time.

Matt Abrahams:

Sure.

Structuring an elevator pitch

John Coné:

And that is the notion of the elevator pitch. You find yourself suddenly in the presence of someone that you really want to sell an idea to or influence and they call it the elevator pitch. I’m not sure anybody has ever defined for me what a good elevator pitch would be. Could you?

Matt Abrahams:

So to me, a good elevator pitch is a clear, concise, passionately-delivered advocation for what it is you’re positioning or pitching, right? So it is about clarity and concision that’s relevant and engaging to the person you’re speaking to. So that’s, at a highest level, what I think a good elevator pitch is. Concision is key. I mean it’s called an elevator pitch because the idea is you get in the elevator with somebody and by the time you get to the floor above, that you’ve been able to communicate your point. This is a great example of how structure can help. “Let me introduce you to a pitching structure that I like, and in a moment I’m going to ask one of you to give me a product or service that I understand and know and I will pitch it for you right now on the spot.” We have not coordinated this at all. You didn’t know I was going to ask you to do it and I don’t know what you’re going to say.

But here’s a great structure that I really like. It’s four sentence starters or what I call stems, sentence stems. “What if you could?” “So that.” “For example.” “And that’s not all.” If you finish those four sentence starters, I believe you have a very good, rudimentary beginning of an efficient pitch. Let me do an example, hopefully this will go well, and then we’ll talk a little bit more about the structure. So Des or John, is there a product or service that I would understand that you would like me to pitch? I’m happy to do it.

John Coné:

The one I can think of is why should everybody be listening to your podcast?

Matt Abrahams:

Oh, excellent. Well, thank you. What if you could become a more effective communicator in both your personal and professional life so that you can accomplish your goals, perhaps being hired, perhaps getting a promotion, perhaps having one of those crucial conversations? And that’s not all. You get exposed to a community of listeners and others around the globe who share your desire to improve both personally and professionally. “What if you could?” “So that.” “For example.” “And that’s not all.” “What if you could” gets people connected and engaged? It’s intriguing. It’s curiosity building. “So that” makes it relevant to them. “For example” gives specific points or ideas that make it very concrete and real. Our brains are wired for concrete detail so it makes it more memorable. And then the “that’s not all” talks about what happens beyond what it is you’re pitching.

If you’re pitching to a venture capitalist or somebody in private equity, they want to know about the business today, but they want to know what’s possible in the future. So these four sentence starters, “What if you could?” “So that,” “For example,” “And that’s not all,” is a very quick way to consolidate your thoughts and engage somebody so that they at least understand your idea and what it is that you’re trying to get across. Could you do a more robust pitch? Absolutely, but this is a good place to start.

Des Dearlove:

No, that was very good. Very impressive. Very helpful. I’m going to take another question actually. Again it’s picking up slightly on an earlier point and I think it has a wider application as well. Deepti says, “As an immigrant, I always struggle with structuring my idea according to the audience.” Now this is hard. I happen to be in Finland today so I was talking to people who are not necessarily on the same wavelength as myself. How do you tune in? How do you manage that?

Matt Abrahams:

So many, many of us are in cultures, contexts and languages that are not our native language and context. So it is important to be thinking about how our communication has to change, how we have to code switch, if you will. It starts with observation. It starts with trying to understand what’s going on and what’s expected. So doing a little homework, doing a lot of observation. On the show, on Think Fast, Talk Smart, I’ve interviewed several experts in this notion of languages that are other than our own, non-native speaking, et cetera, and all of them come to the same conclusion. The goal is not to sound like a native communicator. By definition, that’s not possible. You’re not native. The goal is to get your point across. So when you stop putting that pressure to say it right, whatever right is, instead it’s to focus on getting my point across and connecting, which means you can do a few things.

One, you can say it and then you can reinforce it through a story or an example. So you’re repeating yourself in a slightly different way to help the message land and increase the F word of all communication. And it’s not the naughty one, it’s fidelity. The goal of communication is accuracy and clarity of transmission of meaning. Now I shouldn’t say the goal of all communication. There are some types of communication where we want to be purposely ambiguous, think politeness, negotiation, et cetera, but most communication strives towards fidelity, accuracy and clarity. And if we remind ourselves of that as non-native speakers in a context and culture that is not our own, just focus on, “What can I do to help reinforce my message so fidelity is high?” So repeat yourself, ask questions, use more gestures. There are lots of things we can do to increase fidelity that have nothing to do with saying it’s syntactically, grammatically correct. And that’s where I would tell people to focus.

The benefits of small talk

John Coné:

There are so many different directions we can go with this, Matt, and I will admit having a personal reason for taking us back to the notion of small talk.

Matt Abrahams:

Ah, yes.

John Coné:

My wife will tell me I suck at it. And one of the things that I’ve noticed is I’m less alone than I used to be in this distributed work environment where we’re not around people as much anymore. For them, not so much for me.

Matt Abrahams:

I see. Yes, you’re very kind. You’re very benevolent, John. Yes, yes.

John Coné:

What are your tips for being better at small talk?

Matt Abrahams:

Well, first and foremost, I want everybody to appreciate that small talk is not frivolous. Many of us think it’s just something we have to do. It’s a necessary evil. Big things happen during small talk. I have many crusades and missions I’m trying to be on. One of them is to transform how we see small talk. Small talk is actually a very useful form of communication. It’s where we build relationships. It’s where we learn. It’s how we develop ourselves and others. And I would challenge everybody listening to reflect on a close personal friendship you have. I’m not talking about social media friendships. My hunch is somebody in your close social network, you initially connected with through small talk. It’s important. Here’s the problem though. We don’t learn how to do it and we’re so worried about how to start it and how to end it that we shy away from it.

On my podcast, on Think Fast, Talk Smart, I had an amazing guest. Her name is Rachel Greenwald. Rachel is a fascinating person. She teaches academic courses. She’s also a professional matchmaker and she told me something that fundamentally changed the way I think about small talk. She said the goal of small talk is to be interested, not interesting, and that takes a tremendous amount of pressure off of you when you think, “I don’t have to be interesting.” Many of us see small talk as a tennis match where, “I want to ace the ball over the net. I want to be really interesting so people want to engage with me.” Instead, it’s more like hacky sack. You know that bean bag game where the whole goal is to kick it to one person who then kicks it back? The whole goal is to collaborate so the ball doesn’t hit the ground. Be interested. Ask questions. Make observations.

My mother-in-law had a black belt in small talk and her superpower, her secret weapon, was three simple words. “Tell me more.” In a conversation, she would give people space to say more and it was wonderful. So you ask questions, you give people space. Now the question becomes, “How do I start and how do I end it?” So you start by simply making an observation. It doesn’t have to be some amazing, deep, profound thought.

I tell this story all the time. I was at a conference. You know what these conferences are like. There was a reception afterwards. I’m in the buffet line. I don’t know anybody. I look around and everybody’s wearing different shades of blue. Not like it was a uniform or something, it was just a coincidence. I turned to this gentleman next to me who I did not know from anyone and I said, “I must have missed the memo on wearing blue.” He looked around and said, “Yeah, that’s strange.” From that moment on, he and I connected. We’ve become good friends. We share academic interests. When I am in his city, I visit him. He visits me. And it only started with an observation. So it doesn’t take much to ignite good small talk.

Now how we get out of it is tricky. Many of us want to leave our conversations and don’t know how. We usually rely on biology. “I’m hungry,” “I’m thirsty,” “I have to go to the bathroom,” but that can backfire. I was with a gentleman engaged in small talk once. I wanted to take a break. I said, “Oh, I’m sorry. I have to go to use the restroom.” He said, “Me too,” and then we ended up speaking for another 45 minutes because we just couldn’t break up. So Rachel had this great technique. She calls it the white flag. Not for surrender, but in auto racing they wave a white flag to signal the final lap. So when you’re ready to end a small talk interaction, you signal it.

You say, “I’ve really enjoyed this conversation. In a few minutes, I want to go over there and talk to somebody I know. But before we do, I’d like to ask you one more question.” So I’m signaling that I want it to end, but I’m going to continue for a little bit longer. That way, you can prepare for how you’re going to part. I can prepare for how I’m going to part. I use this technique all the time now. It is wonderful. So small talk is important. It’s about being interested, not interesting. There are great, easy ways to start through observation. And wave the white flag, signal you want to leave before you leave, and it makes it easier and it’s fun.

Des Dearlove:

Very good. I think we can all learn to become better at small talk, even John. No, I’m with you, John. I’m with you, John, absolutely. It’s the networking thing. It’s the terror of networking and it is. I have made some inroads in recent years to just know that to some extent, it doesn’t matter what you say as long as you say something that doesn’t repel people because they’re looking for an excuse to talk to you too. So I think there’s a lot in there. We’ve mostly been talking though, Matt, about people wanting to keep the ball in the air, people wanting to engage. What about being hostile? I think a lot of people are really concerned they’ll get a nasty question when they’re doing their public speaking or when they try to engage with the audience, they’ll get a question that … It’s back to the classic imposter syndrome. “What if I don’t know the answer? What if I get attacked?” What are other ways to diffuse that, at least the anxiety, and possibly even the attack?

Matt Abrahams:

Certainly, there are. And you’re right. This is a very challenging situation and many people are made very nervous as a result of their concern about hot, spicy, challenging questions or situations. First and foremost, we have to remind ourselves that it is possible to understand and still disagree. So if somebody shares an opinion that’s opposed to yours, they have that right to have that opinion. Now how they present it to you, you need to respond to, but we put a lot of pressure on ourselves for two things. One, we feel like we have to respond right away and you don’t. You can take a beat. You can say, “Let me think about that for a moment,” or you can ask a clarifying question or you can paraphrase so you can buy some time. Because a lot of the pressure in these tricky situations is we feel like, “I have to respond right away,” and that’s not true. You can take a break. You can take a breather.

When it comes to responding, I really encourage you to look for some area of connection and commonality because from there you can begin to build a relationship, an understanding, a next step. So if somebody is diametrically opposed to my point of view and they let me know it in a vigorous, harsh, challenging way, I can still notice that they are as passionate about this topic as I am, even though we disagree on the approach or the idea. And in that, I can form a bridge to make a connection. I can appreciate their point of view. I can echo, “I’ve heard your point of view.” This is where paraphrasing comes in. Doesn’t mean I agree, but I can then immediately say, “And we both think that this project or this need is really important,” and then use that as a stepping stone.

So it feels intimidating and threatening, which causes us to want to retreat physically, to answer the tone in the same tone that it was delivered to us. But if we take a beat, we take a step back, we can then approach in a more collaborative way. It is not easy to do this. I have been in many situations where a lot of heat and spice is coming my way. But still, when you take that moment, collect yourself, find commonality, acknowledge what you’ve heard, you can open up a door that can really be productive and helpful.

Using gestures as reinforcement

John Coné:

Matt, I’m noticing as I listen and learn from you, I’m seeing your hands a lot and it makes me realise I haven’t seen mine. Am I screwing up here? Am I missing an opportunity?

Matt Abrahams:

So I do gesture a lot. That is true, and I actually gesture more than I recommend people do. There’s some good research in nonverbal communication and haptics, the study of touch and hands, that it actually is helpful. You are helping people. If your gestures are congruent with what you’re saying, and I’m not saying playing charades where I’m actually acting out everything, but if I’m saying something in an emphatic way and my gestures reflect that, I’m actually sending multiple signals of the same message. I’m actually reinforcing what it is you’re hearing. So there’s some good evidence that gestures are important and appropriate. Certainly, they can be distracting. The number one question I get when I talk about nonverbal presence, what you do with your body and your voice is, “What do I do with my hands?” So let me share with you my quick rules for this.

One, show them. Do not hide them. If I’m standing, I don’t want them behind my back. I don’t want them in my pockets, I want them neutrally placed. I don’t want them too high, it looks like I’m praying or I’m defensive, nor do I want them too low. I call it the fig leaf. Imagine what I’m talking about. If you were at a museum, you get the picture. You want them right at your navel, your belly button, just resting when you’re not using them. And I only have one rule for gesturing. Go beyond your shoulders. If I were to say this, if I were to say, “At Thinkers50, we have a very open culture.” Really? What if I said, “At Thinkers50, we have a very open culture.” All I did was go beyond my shoulders and it feels completely different.

So people stress about their gestures. People have different levels of comfort. Try to gesture if you can. They should reinforce and be congruent with what you’re saying. I wouldn’t worry about it so much. If you’re virtual, like we are today in the box, you have to gesture higher. Notice where my hands are. If you look at it, my thumbs are at my shoulders. If we were in a room together and I gestured like this, you’d think I’m crazy. But when we’re virtual, because our body is only shown in bust format from mid-chest up, I have to gesture higher so you can see it. So we have to change the way we gesture when we’re virtual. So John, you’re not doing anything wrong. But if you can, include some gestures. It won’t hurt. Perfect.

Giving feedback

Des Dearlove:

Fantastic. Listen, inevitably we’re going to run out of time, but we still got five minutes. And this is a serious professional question. Giving negative feedback, it’s difficult. And I know from the bit of research I’ve read from somebody else in the Thinkers50, Erin Meyer’s work, which we’re big admirers of. It can be a cultural thing, how you give negative feedback. So there may not be one simple answer, but are there some kind of guidelines?

Matt Abrahams:

Thank you for the question. Feedback is very challenging for people. I’m going to take both mindset and messaging approaches here. From a mindset approach. I encourage people to see feedback as an opportunity to problem solve. I have a colleague at Stanford’s Business School. Her name’s Michelle Gelfand. Amazing person. She likes to say you have to mind your metaphors when it comes to communication and interaction. So the metaphor I bring to giving feedback influences how I approach it and what I say. So if I see it as an opportunity to problem solve, that changes my whole approach versus some other metaphor I might use. So if I see giving constructive feedback as an opportunity to problem solve, immediately it means I have to invite you to help me solve the problem, which means I have to think about my tone and try not to make you defensive, yet being clear and defining what the problem is from my perspective.

So start from that mindset. That means you have to clearly understand, “What is it that you want changed?” Many of us in constructive feedback situations are so frustrated. We just want this to stop or we just want the person to do whatever it is. We have to take a step back and really appreciate what is it that we want in that moment. I’ll give you a quick anecdote. I have a friend, great guy, known him forever. Big guy, 6’8, deep voice, incredibly intelligent. He had a boss once give him constructive feedback. The feedback was, “Stop being so intimidating.” What is that? What does that mean?

What the boss wanted at the end of the day was when my friend spoke, because of his presence and his intelligence, people just stopped talking after he would speak. So in meetings when he would give an idea, people would, “It was a good idea. Let’s just do it. We all heard it.” So what the boss wanted was a more collaborative environment. Had he gone to my friend and said, “I really appreciate all of your contribution. I’d love for you to speak later in the meeting versus sooner,” much different feedback, right? But you have to be specific what you’re looking for. That’s the mindset piece. See it as a problem to be solved collaboratively.

The messaging piece, you need to be clear. I have a structure I love for giving feedback, especially in-the-moment feedback. “What?” “So what?” “Now what?” Three questions. “What?” “So what?” “Now what?” “What?” is the behavior or the thing you want to address. “So what?” is why it’s important. “Now what?” is what you’d like the person to do differently? I’ll give you an example. Imagine one of us, you and I, come out of a meeting together and you say, “Matt, how did that meeting go?” and I thought there were some things you could have done better. I might say, “Overall, I thought the meeting went really well, except when you talked about the implementation plan. You spoke quickly and didn’t give as much detail as you did elsewhere.” That’s the “what.” “When you speak quickly without a lot of detail, people might think you’re unprepared or nervous.” That’s the “so what.” “Next time I’d love for you to slow down and include these two additional bits of information.” That’s the “now what.”

So by having a problem-solving approach and using “What?” “So what?” “Now what?” I package up the information in an actionable, memorable, collaborative way. So it’s hard, you have to practice, but using those techniques will make a big difference.

Des Dearlove:

John, I’m going to let you have the final question of this series. How about that?

John Coné:

And that is, Matt, a strange hypothetical, but you’ve just got a minute in front of the top leadership of an organisation, what’s the single piece of advice you would give them?

Matt Abrahams:

Well, that’s really easy. Focus on communication. A lot of organisations see communication as a necessary evil. It’s just something they have to do. Communication is critical to the success of organisations, to the success of interpersonal relationships. So what does that mean? That means an organisation needs to put in a communication infrastructure. And I’m not talking a tool like Slack or Jira or things like that. As part of the interviewing process, you need to talk to people the importance of communication. During performance reviews, you need to bring communication up. At the end of meetings or interactions, take 30 seconds to comment on the quality and calibre of the communication, not rehashing what was said.

Taking the time to put a premium on communication. Giving people the opportunity, the processes, and the tools that they need will make a fundamental difference. I am brought in routinely to organisations to triage bad communication, bad communication infrastructure. If you change that, if you build it into the corporation, the company, the interactions, you make life easier and you become more efficient and effective. So if I had only one thing to say to a leadership team, I would say take the time to invest in your company’s communication and your own communication. The dividends it will pay are huge.

John Coné:

Great.

Des Dearlove:

Fantastic. Okay. I am afraid that’s all we have time for. Huge thanks to our guest, Matt Abrahams. And if you want to improve your communication skills, his book is Think Faster, Talk Smarter and the podcast is a very, very good listen. Please do check that out too. Thanks to all of you for tuning in. Thank you for your brilliant questions throughout the series. This is the Thinkers50 Radar webinar, in collaboration with the Association of Talent Development. We’ve been Des Dearlove and John Coné. This is sadly the last in the current series, but we will be back next year for another series of Thinkers50 Radar. We hope to see you then.