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People would rather be standing on the precipice of a 30-story building covered in snakes and spiders rather than giving a presentation. By frankly, I think the other 15% are lying. We can prepare to be spontaneous. All communication planar spontaneous needs to be goal-driven.
How can we get over our nerves when we're feeling especially self-conscious? When it comes to managing anxiety, you really have to do the single best thing you can do in small fun is just be curious. When we're negotiating or trying to convince even our partner of something, how should we communicate?
First and foremost, we have to... Hey yap gang. A lot of people think that great communicators are just born as smooth talkers. But let's be real. Even the most confident person can freeze up when an unexpected question comes their way.
Earlier this week, we talked about how to pitch like a pro. And today's yap classic builds right on that, because it's all about the one scale that makes every pitch, meeting, negotiation, and even everyday conversations better, and that's your communication skills. We're bringing back my conversation with Matt Abraham, a Stanford professor and the author
of Think Faster Talk Smarter. If you've ever been put on the spot and felt like your words just disappear, stick around. Because Matt is about to show us how to think on our feet and talk smarter, no matter what gets thrown at us. Matt, welcome to Young Improveding Podcast.
Hello, I am so excited to be here with you, thank you. I am so excited too, because I'm so fascinated by communication and human behavior.
There are two of my favorite topics, and you are just such an incredible expert in this
area. So I can't wait to jump right in. We've all heard that old statistic that most people fear public speaking more than death. And that's just the regular planned public speaking, but it also sounds like based on your
research that many of us also fear impromptu spontaneous speaking even more. So just how scary is public speaking and spontaneous speaking to the average person, and why do you think that's the case? So it is really terrifying. People would rather be standing on the precipice of a 30-story building covered in snakes
and spiders rather than giving a presentation up to 85% of people report feeling nervous and high-stakes communication situations.
“Quite frankly, I think the other 15% are lying.”
This is something that's just innate to being human. Those of us who study it have found it across all cultures, it tends to start around the same time, young teens or when we're our anxiety around speaking in front of others really that takes off. And you're right, you know, it's not just planned communication.
It's also in the moment spontaneous speaking, which if you think about it is most of our communication. So it is part of being human, we feel threatened by the opportunity to be up in front of others. Those of us who study it think it has an evolutionary origin to it.
When our species was evolving, we would hang out in groups of about 150 people and your relative status in that group meant everything. And when I say status, I don't just mean who's driving a fancy car, who has the most social media following. I mean access to resources like food, shelter, reproduction.
So anything you did that put your status at risk would cause anxiety and getting up in front of others was exactly that. So it is ubiquitous yet it is something we can learn to manage.
“But now in modern days, why is spontaneous speaking so important?”
Yeah, well, because things come out so fast and furiously, I mean think about it.
We are bombarded with information all the time, people are asking us question...
asking us for feedback, we make mistakes, we have to correct things go wrong, we have to apologize, we're in a situation where we have to make small talk. The interactions that we're having both in person and virtually require us to speak spontaneously and to shift very quickly as we do it. Do you feel like the internet and things like AI and all this technology that's going
on, do you feel like that's hurting our communication skills as younger people? I don't know if I would say hurting, it's definitely changing and challenging it. There are more ways to communicate and some of those ways are actually really helpful to us. We can be more efficient in our communication. We can spend more time with it because of tools that help us get it messages just out
more quickly. At the same time, we miss the opportunity to connect. So, I am an optimist when it comes to technology and communication, but we do have to adjust and adapt. And the big thing we have to remind ourselves is in the workforce, we have multiple generations
and some of the generations more likely the younger generations are more comfortable and used to using technology and those of my generation are older aren't.
“So, we're in this transition phase and we all just have to remember that we're all learning”
and we learn at different pace. But I do think technology can help us communicate, we just have to leverage it appropriately. Do you feel like older generations, like boomers and maybe Gen X, that they're better at spontaneous communication or do you feel like it's the same across the board? So, the need to communicate spontaneous, I think, is the same.
I actually think that all generations struggle but for different reasons. younger generations, in my observation, tend to struggle with the connection piece, a lot of spontaneous communication is about connection. Older generation, my generation and even older, tend to struggle with the speed of communication because a lot of spontaneous speaking happens immediately and it happens quickly.
So I think everybody struggles a little bit but the reasons they struggle differ based on just their experience and how they grew up communicating. And all said, we can learn to do this better. Yeah, I was just going to say, this is something we can actually improve. It's not just natural born skill and you have it or you don't.
“Can you shut the story of how you got better at spontaneous speaking?”
Well, there's several, it's a confluence of several things but it turns out with my last name, Abraham's A.B.
I always went first through school, literally from kindergarten through university.
I always knew where I sat, I always sat front, front row, closest to the door. So whenever the teachers and I am a teacher and I know it's just easier to do things alphabetically. I would always be called on first. So growing up, I just got used to having to speak spontaneously. My friends, whose last names were later in the alphabet, would always thank me.
They said, thank you because you would start and it would give me time to think and plan in prepare. So part of my ability to speak better spontaneously and I can certainly improve as can all of us came from experience and practice and experience is a large part of what helps us get better at all communication. It's like an athlete, athletes train to be spontaneous.
They do a lot of drills, so in the game they can be agile and respond to what happens. And we can all do the same thing. I either through good fortune or dumb luck with my last name. Got a lot of reps early on in life. Yeah, to be honest, this is a skill that I really, really want to be better at because
I feel like for me specifically, it is so important for my job.
And I always prep from my interviews, I go through the books, but your book, Think Faster,
Talk Smarter, I'm literally going to go back and take notes and try to teach other people and do whatever I can to just retain the information as much as I can. So I'm really excited to go back and like literally study it so, so well. And I don't feel that way a lot of, like, about a lot of books. So Think Faster Talk Smarter Guys, I highly recommend it.
“And I think, like I mentioned, for my skills, I feel like that's literally the number one”
area I can improve. And I'm really good at speaking about marketing and podcasting and business and sales and all the things that I'm an expert on. But I'm always having to talk to like AI experts in neuroscientists and biohackers and people that I like know, and they're like geniuses.
And then I have to like be smart in front of them. So just thoughts around that, like, in terms of being comfortable about what you're an expert on. And then talking in situations where you're like, by far, not the expert. Absolutely.
So first, thank you for the compliment.
The book was written to really be applicable.
They're try this parts of the book.
You know, I think the only way to learn any communication, but especially spontaneous communication is by doing it. And so I tried to make the book accessible in that way. And thank you for saying that I was successful at least for you. So what I'm going to give advice that I give to people when I talk about small talk
because what you're asking about is really touching on the same issue. So the single best thing you can do in small talk when you're meeting people you don't know, or you don't feel that you are at the same level they are, is just be curious. You know, we have this pressure we put on ourselves to be interesting.
“And I think what's most important, and I learned this from a guest on my podcast thing”
Fast Talks smart, her name's Rachel Greenwald. She taught me this notion of the goal is to be interested, not interesting. So lead with curiosity. You don't know have to know everything, but be curious and when you're curious, others will open up and share.
And if they're good at what they do, they'll help make their content accessible to you. So we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to feel like I need to be the expert. I need to ask the best question. I need to have the best feedback. That's a tremendous amount of pressure to put on ourselves.
And instead we say, hey, I just want to connect and I'm curious about what the other person says, that reduces that pressure, it makes it easier for the other person to share. So you know, my mother-in-law had a black belt in small talk. She was amazing. And her secret with three new sentence, three words, tell me more.
So just expressing curiosity, I think, holla will help you now. You need to do your research, you need to understand the domain that the person's in. So just getting the person talking demonstrating interest, being curious, allowing them
“space to respond, that's the best way I think to get conversation going and to elevate”
your knowledge level and appropriateness of what you're saying. Related to this and something that I love learning about in your book was your advice to be mediocre, to not be afraid to be so dull. And this is like my biggest fear, like I won't say anything if I feel like it's not useful. I'll just move on to the next thing.
So I'd love to just hear your perspective on how can we be more mediocre?
Yes, so to prepare for this work I did that ultimately ended up in the book, I did a lot
of research across many academic domains, psychology, anthropology, sociology, communication, neuroscience and improvisation. The improv has just amazing insights into communication, especially spontaneous communication. And in improv they have this notion of dare to be dull. In other words, the goal and improv is not to be an amazing star with everything you say.
Instead, the job is to just get things going, move, keep things moving along, and sometimes
“the best way to do that is just to do it, be dull.”
So I've transformed that into what I call maximized your mediocrity. And I teach at Stanford, I teach Stanford Business School students, and I start my first class every quarter by saying that goal of this class is to maximize your mediocrity. And holla, you should see these students, draws, draw.
They have never been told to be mediocre.
But the point is this, if you think of your brain like a computer, it's not a perfect analogy, but it works for this. If you have a laptop or a phone that has lots of apps or windows open, each one of those apps and windows is performing less well because the other ones are open. You have limited bandwidth and you're spreading it thin.
When I am putting pressure on myself to say the right thing in the right way at the right time, to be perfect, I am actually putting so much pressure on myself. I'm using all this bandwidth to judge and evaluate and assess my perfection or lack thereof that I actually have very little bandwidth to actually do the communication. So when you give yourself permission to just get it done, I like to say it's about connection
not perfection. If I just connect with the person, if I just convey my information, I then free up all this bandwidth that allows me to do it really well.
So I end my very first class by saying, I told you to maximize mediocrity and the reason
is so you can achieve communication greatness. When we remove that pressure from ourselves to be right, to be perfect, we actually free up bandwidth to help us get the point across and do it well. And I'll just say one more thing. This is why memorizing is the enemy of communication success.
And I know for many people, they're like, "Wait, wait, wait, if I don't memorize, I'm lost. No, memorizing makes it harder to actually communicate because part of your brain is constantly assessing. Am I saying what I had memorized? Which only leaves the other part of your brain to actually communicate.
It is better to have a road map, a structure, just bullet points, that you ar...
with than memorizing word for word.
“So being mediocre is all about changing cognitive bandwidth to be in your favor.”
I am obsessed with these strategies that's like so exciting to me to learn this stuff. I want to step, I'm going to drill in on dullness and everything like that later. But I want to kind of step back and be more macro. So in your book, Think Faster Talks Martyr, you have a six step method. Could you go over that at a high level for us?
Absolutely. Let me introduce the method. It really divides into M and M, my favorite candies. It's about mindset and messaging.
The first four steps are all about mindset.
When it comes to communication in general, but specifically spontaneous speaking, anxiety looms large, we started by talking about that. Most people are nervous, most people are really nervous in spontaneous situations. So step number one is learning to manage that anxiety. Once we've managed that anxiety, the next thing we have to do is we need to do exactly
what we talked about, not get in that mindset if I have to be perfect. So we have to focus our efforts on just getting the idea across. It's about connection, not perfection. Third, we have to see these situations as opportunities, not threats. Many of us see speaking in front of others as a threat.
And we have to reframe that as an opportunity that can really help us to be successful. And then the final step of mindset has to do with listening. And many people are like, what, listening is important.
“You're talking about speaking, no, you have to listen.”
You have to be able to focus on what is needed in the moment. It is critical.
So we start with anxiety.
We move to how we focus on connection, not perfection. It's about opportunities, not threats. And then it's about listening. Then we transition to messaging. The final two steps are about messaging.
When we communicate, we must leverage structure. Many of us just take the audience on our journey of our discovery of what we want to say as we're saying. In other words, we ramble, we list, we itemize. It's very hard for others to remember lists of information.
And the final step is we have to be concise and clear. Many of us say much more than we need to say. My mother has this wonderful saying, tell the time, don't build the clock. Many of us, when we speak, say more than we need to. So the last two steps are about structure and being concise.
So taking together that methodology can help you feel more comfortable and confident in all communication, but especially spontaneous speaking. And you don't have to be an expert in each of those steps. Doing any work in any one of those areas will help you. So I want to drill down and since you broke it apart in two parts, let's split it mindset
and messaging. And I'd love to use a personal example. I interviewed Tom Bill Yudinio, who that is. I don't, who is Tom? He's this huge plotcaster.
So he's got this podcast called Impact Theory. He's huge on YouTube. He's like probably top 10 plotcasters of all time. And yeah, it's okay, he's huge. And because he was competition, my nerves were at a different level.
Like I've interviewed Matthew McConaughey, I've interviewed Damon John Gary Vee. Like all these celebrities, and I wasn't nervous at all. But because he was like a podcaster, I just kept feeling like he's judging me. And I kept feeling like, oh, he probably thinks he's better than me.
But even like my lips were like quivering and like that never happens.
And I felt like I just wasn't as present as I'm used to. And I really wanted to impress him, right? And so I felt like I did a good job. Like I had prepared. I feel like he probably didn't notice.
But I felt, you know what, I could have done such a better job. Like for example, I feel literally a hundred times more present now than I did yesterday in that interview. And it's because I just feel comfortable with you. I don't feel like you're judging me.
And so I'm able to be myself. And even this morning, I woke up and I was like, the first thing in my mind was like, you blew it. You know, that's what I woke up with. And I was like judging myself.
So I know this speaks to a lot of the things that you were just outlining when it comes to mindset.
“So how can we get over our nerves when we're feeling especially self-conscious?”
What could I have done differently in terms of like internal dialogue or like physically, like breathing or whatever I should have done? Tell me. Yeah. So one, thank you for being vulnerable and sharing that a lot of people keep that inside.
And somebody is successful as you and who comes off as confident as you do, sharing that you get nervous. I think it's great for people to hear. We all get nervous. It is the rare person who doesn't in high-stakes situations.
And also thank you for feeling comfortable with me. I, that makes me feel really good. So when it comes to managing anxiety, you really have to take a two-prong approach.
You have to manage both symptoms and sources.
Symptoms are what you physiologically feel.
You shared some of those. And sources are the things that initiate and exacerbate the anxiety. So allow me to share a little bit on both sides of that. So when you begin to feel nervous, your body is responding to threat. It's the fighter flight response.
Everything that goes on for you is what would happen if you were being chased by somebody.
“So deep belly breathing is perhaps the best thing you could do.”
And when I say deep belly breathing, I mean filling your lower abdomen if you've ever done yoga or meditation or tai chi or chi gong, it's this deep belly breathing. And the important part is it's the exhalation. So I like to joke instead of saying the rule of thumb, the rule of long is, you want your exhale to be twice as long as you're inhale.
And if you take two or three deep breaths, like a three-county, I'm in a six-count
out, you slow down your autonomic.
Your nervous system, you'll be less jittery, you'll speak more slowly, you'll be more present. So that's a great thing to do to start. If you're somebody who shakes, you said you, there was a little quivering going on. That's adrenaline, adrenaline, so purpose is to move you from threat to safety.
So we want to move, but we want to move with purpose. So big broad gestures. If you're standing in front of an audience, you want to walk forward, movement in a positive way that supports what you're saying, gives that energy a place to go and you will shake less.
“My personal symptom that happens to me, I blush and I perspire, I turn red and I sweat.”
That's because your core body temperature is going up. Your heart's beating faster, your body's tensing, it's like you're exercising, when most of us exercise, we sweat and we perspire. So we have to cool ourselves down.
Before I ever speak, before I'm a guest on a show like yours, I will always hold something
cold in the palms of my hand. The palms of your hand control the temperature of your body, just like your forehead or the back of your neck. You've done this on a cold morning. If you've ever held warm tea or coffee in a mug and felt that it warms you up, we're doing
the opposite, cooling ourselves down. So there are things you can do and there are many other things you can do to reduce the symptoms. But we also have to think about sources, sources are the things that initiate and exacerbate anxiety.
In your case, it sounds like you didn't want to look foolish.
“You wanted to look your best being, you wanted to show up as best as you could.”
That's a lot of pressure you're putting on yourself. So by removing that goal, what's making you nervous in that situation is the goal to come off in the way you wanted to come off. A goal is a future state. So what's making you nervous is a potential negative future outcome.
So if we can make ourselves more present oriented by definition, I'm not worried about the future. So anything you can do to get more present. Some ways to get present are to do something physical, walk around the building, do some light exercise.
You can listen to a song or a playlist, like athlete's due to get present oriented. Start at 100 in count backwards by 17s. That gets you present oriented. My favorite way to get present oriented is to say tongue twisters. You can't say a tongue twister right and not be in the present moment plus it warms up
your voice. So by managing symptoms and sources, you can be more present oriented. You can be more focused on what's happening in the moment and less nervous. So that was a very long one today, and so I'm sorry, but the question is very real and it's something that that most of us can benefit by managing our anxiety.
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“Yeah, 100% and so I started to get better halfway through the interview and I think one”
of the things that I was doing is in my head I was repeating, you are the podcast princess hola. He's here because you have a top 100 podcast, like you are a great podcaster and I was repeating that stuff like you're the podcast princess hola, you're the podcast princess hola. I love that.
So I say I have a mantra I use and my mantra is you have value to bring. So I remind myself, because I can get negative, I can get my thought, you know, I'm not
prepared this person I'm talking to it so amazing, I just say I have value to bring.
There's something that this person is chosen to speak with me, be it on a podcast, be it a student asking me a question, be it somebody, I just randomly meet, I have value to bring and that alone cancels out that negative talk. So that's great. You found a tool for you which is it's called positive affirmation and that seems to work
for you, that's great. And how about the fact that I felt so embarrassed afterwards? It's like what's the importance of being kind to yourself when it comes to things? So grace is really important in this.
“I think what helps many people is to realize that they're not alone in this, that lots”
of people suffer from this, a real quick story. The very first book I wrote was called "Speaking Up Without Freaking Out". It's all about how to manage anxiety. I was in San Francisco Airport. They called my name over the loudspeaker because the chair I was supposed to sit in on
the airplane was broken and they wanted to let me know that. I come back on the guy standing next to me and he said, "You wrote that book on speaking anxiety." I said, "Yes. Have you read it?"
He said, "No, but it helped me." I was like, "You didn't read the book, but it helped you. What do you mean?" He said, "Just knowing that a book like that existed helped him normalize his fear." He said, "I thought I was the only one because it might work, everybody's so good, but
I realized you didn't just write the book for me."
“So my point here is, you have to give yourself a little grace.”
It is normal and natural in the presence of somebody you admire in the presence of somebody who is very qualified and accomplished to want to do well and to be nervous. That makes complete sense. So allow yourself that permission to be nervous and then remind yourself that you have
Value to bring, to do that you can do some things in that moment.
As you said, your conversation yesterday turned out great and he didn't even know you were nervous. So we have to remind ourselves of that thing, that the biggest thing that can help here is reflection, not rumination, but reflection. Reflect now, holla, on how and what you did to get yourself through that.
So the next time you interview somebody where you might feel that way, you'll remind yourself, it is through that reflection that we can change. If we don't take the time to reflect, if we don't give ourselves grace, we're going to fall victim to that same cycle over and over again. So congrats on doing it and congrats on feeling a little embarrassed.
That means that this was important for you. Totally. And I feel like now that I've totally reflected on this conversation couldn't have came at a better time. I feel like the next time I interview somebody who's a huge podcaster and I feel like
it's going to be judging me. I can't give myself some grace and do some of those activities that you mentioned to just get myself ready. Like, okay, holla, you are going to feel nervous. This is how you're going to get over it.
So one of the things that I do when it comes to spontaneous speaking that I don't know is right or wrong is I tend to be comfortable sharing my own stories.
And I was doing that a lot, especially when I first started podcasting to the point where
I got some bad reviews where some people were like, "Hallah, stop talking about yourself." And then I got like more careful that I'm only going to share stories that I don't share very often. And I'm going to share new stories and not tell a lot of the same stories because my listeners listened to more than one episode, right?
So what are your feelings about talking about yourself when it comes to spontaneous speaking?
“So this is a great question because you have to find a very delicate balance.”
Those who study communication and conversation distinguish between supporting and switching tactics. And the idea of supporting tactic is where you reinforce what the other person is saying and a switching tactic is where you switch to something that you want to say. And I'll link this to your question in just a moment.
So if we're having a conversation in Holland, you say, "Hey, I just got back from Hawaii." And I say, "Oh, which island did you go to?" That's a supporting tactic. That invites you to say more. If I say, "Oh, I just got back from Costa Rica, that's a switching tactic."
You want to balance these out and the research suggests you want to be slightly more supporting than switching because that puts the other person in the position of you demonstrating interest and you wanting to hear what they have to say. The same ideas apply to disclosure of our own stories. We want to share some, but not too much.
So the other person, we should be communicating in a way that gets the other person to talk more. But we still have to share some of our stories, so the rule of thumb that they have in this switching versus supporting approach is you want two-thirds supporting one-third switching.
And I think the same idea when it comes to telling stories about ourselves or that are very personal to us versus soliciting stories and input from other people. So I think you shouldn't tell some because if not, it just sounds like you're interrogating people if you don't share anything about yourself. But if you say too much about yourself, then it becomes almost rude.
So I like this one-third, you talking two-thirds them talking approach. Yeah, I feel like that's good because people love to talk about themselves. So if you want somebody to like you, you actually want them to talk about themselves because they'll feel like it was a really happy, positive experience because they got a chance to speak about themselves.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
“And that's why going into those situations, thinking about questions you might want”
to ask is always a good thing.
Even if it's spontaneous, even if I'm going into a party or to some kind of conference setting where there's going to be people milling around, right before I go on the room, I can come up with two or three questions that I'm interested in. And that's how I start because you're right, people like to talk, people like to share information about themselves, having those questions at the ready can really help you.
And when people are talking, is there certain things we should be listening for and things that can help us keep the conversation going? Absolutely. So first and foremost, we need to listen better. We're just not good listening.
We listen for the top line and then we get judging, evaluating, rehearsing. You need to focus your listening. You need to listen for the bottom line. What I teach my students and when I try to do myself and when I host my podcast when I just talk to people on the street, I try to listen to paraphrase.
“So as somebody is talking, I'm saying, what's the core essence?”
What's the bottom line? If I had to paraphrase or summarize what they said, what would I say? And when you listen that way, you listen more deeply.
So in conversation, I'm listening for the bottom line.
And that's where I start my response. So I might even comment on what that bottom line is.
I might say, oh, you're really curious about this.
So I name it and then I add to it. So we have to listen better.
We have to listen for the bottom line.
So as you're listening to somebody think about, if I had to paraphrase what they're saying, what would I say? So use that is the starting point for what you want to contribute next. This reminds me of something that Chris Vost does. Do you know who that is?
What the difference? I just remember what the word is. Yeah, I just did. You did. For my podcast.
Great guy. Really interesting insight. Yeah. I've interviewed him like five or six times.
“So I definitely remember what I'm talking about right now.”
But basically, I don't remember what it's called, but you paraphrase what somebody's saying as a question. So yes.
Then they'll just say more information.
He likes to talk about mirroring. That's what it is. Yeah, that's what it is. Yeah, that's what it is. And then Charles do hit calls this looping.
It's this notion of you start with what the person says, you loop back to it and then you move forward. And they're both talking about exactly the same thing. It's you recognize what the person has said, which validates them, which builds connection and trust.
But it also gives you a starting point for what comes next. Okay, Matt. So I know this is spontaneous speaking, but is there any way that we can actually prepare because when it comes to wanting to prepare for something, if you know the general topic, I'm assuming that you can at least prepare a little bit, even if you're trying to talk
on the cuff, right? Absolutely, Holly, you are right.
We can prepare to be spontaneous and that sounds counterintuitive, but it really is true.
One of the key ways to get yourself prepared is to become familiar with structure. Most of us when we are nervous and we're put on the spot, we just list and itemize things. We just say whatever comes into our mind. And that makes it really hard for the audience, the person or people we're talking to to digest it.
A structure is a logical connection of ideas, a beginning, a middle and an end. Let me give you an example. If you've ever watched an advertisement, you have likely seen the structure problem solution benefit. Advertisement start with some issue challenge that exists.
They then say how their product or service fixes that issue or challenge and then how you benefit. So if you're selling cars, selling medicine, selling alcohol does not matter, they all follow that structure. It's a logical connection of ideas.
If you are familiar with structure, you have a recipe that you can follow for answering questions for making small talk for giving feedback for apologizing whatever the situation is. So if it's okay with you, can I share my favorite structure that I think works in a lot of situations with that thing?
All right. That's of course. So it's three simple questions. What? So what?
Now what? The what is the information you're getting across? It could be your idea, your product, your update, your feedback.
“The so what is why is it important irrelevant to the person you're talking to?”
And then the now what is what comes next, maybe it's, do you have questions for me? Let's go into that other room. Let me show you something. It's the next step. So let me give you just real quickly a couple examples of how this might work.
Imagine you're in a meeting and your boss says, hey, give me an update on that project you're working on. You hadn't prepared for an update. So you follow this structure. You answer the three questions.
The what is your update? Here's what I've done. The so what is, here's why it's important. It matches our goals or expectations. And then the now what is, here are the three things that I need to have happened before
I can progress. So simply by answering what, so what, now what, you've given a structured, packaged, concise response to the update. Similarly, let's imagine you're walking out of a different meeting and somebody turns to you and says, how do you think that meeting went?
Again, you're not prepared to get feedback. You didn't know you were going to have to get feedback. You simply answer these three questions. I might say, I thought the meeting went great, except when you talked about the implementation plan, you spoke quickly without a lot of detail.
That's the what? When you speak quickly without a lot of detail, people might think you're nervous or unprepared. That's the so what. Next time, slow down and add these two additional bits of information. That's the now what.
So in two very different situations, both spontaneous, by just answering those questions, what, so what, now what, that structure helps me get through it. And it takes pressure off me because I don't have to think about how to say it. I know how I'm going to say it, I'm just going to answer those questions. I just think, I just have to think about what those answers are.
So structure is key and you can prepare and practice structure. I challenge all of your listeners when they are done listening to this episode or any of your other awesome episodes.
“At the end, to simply say, what was the key takeaway for me?”
Why was it important and how can I use it? And by drilling that, just for 10, 15 seconds, you get more used to using this structure so it becomes natural to you. So structure is a really key ingredient to helping with all these situations we've been
Talking about.
Yeah, and when it comes to structure, would you consider storytelling and stories to have structure, too? Stories are structures. That's all this. Another structure is just another fancy word for story.
All stories have a structure, beginning, middle, and, and, so yes. So when you, when somebody says, tell more stories or this is about storytelling and telling or narrative, what they're really saying in what I am hearing them say is use a structure, use a structure that engages people.
“And so yes, I see those as synonymous and very important.”
And what kind of other structures do you lay out in your book or anything else that you want to share about structures? Oh, thank you.
So the whole second part of the book, the first part of the book is about the sixth step
methodology. The second part of the book is about six specific spontaneous speaking situations. And for each one of them, it has a particular structure that I like teaching. So let me give you an example of one. Many of the people listening to your show or entrepreneurs or people who have ideas that
they want to motivate others by, I have a structure that I really like for pitching. So this is short persuasion, like an elevator pitch. This structure is different from what's so at now. This structure is just sentence starters. You finish these sentence starters. So it's what if you could so that, for example, and that's not all.
If you finish those four sentence starters, you have a good pitch. So I'm going to ask you to put me on the spot if you're willing to do that. Okay. Will you pick a particular product or service that I would know something I know? Just give it to me.
And without any thought, I'm going to pitch it just using this structure. So if I do my job right, I'm going to demonstrate spontaneous speaking. So I don't know what you're about to say. You didn't know I was going to ask you to do this. So we're both being spontaneous, giving something to pitch, a product or service that I
would know about. Mac laptop. You did that because I had problems with my Mac laptop. Oh, maybe I, I, I would anyway. So what if you could easily access all of your information in a sleek, looking
device so that you could be prepared and have the information you need at your fingertips.
“For example, imagine you are flying from Los Angeles to New York and you have to create”
a presentation that you have to deliver when you land. Wouldn't it be great to have a small, compact, good looking laptop that you could work on? And that's not all. You get access to a whole community of applications and users that can be supportive of your efforts.
So by simply answering those specific prompts, what if you could so that, for example, and that's not all, you can craft a pitch. What if you could get people's attention? Attention is the most precious commodity we have in the world today. So that makes it relevant.
Here's what's important for you.
For example, grounds it in reality. We remember detail better than we remember high level information and that's not all extends as it expands, whatever you're talking about beyond the moment. So just knowing those four sentence starters can help you pitch anything in the moment. And one of the things that can also help us with having our speeches be sticky and having
people remember what we say is brevity. So speaking of Apple, you talk about Steve Jobs and he's got the iPod and he's got very focused messaging at thousand songs in your pocket is the focused message. How can we come up with our own impromptu brief message like, what are some tactics for that?
Yes. So two things beyond having a structure, structure is critical to being more concise. Two things.
“One you have to think about your audience in what's relevant and most important to them.”
And then focus everything you're doing, like a magnet towards that relevance.
So I am constantly thinking to myself, what is most important to my audience in this moment?
And that's what helps me focus. Second, all communication, plan, and spontaneous needs to be goal driven. A goal has three parts, information, emotion, and action. What do I want the audience to know? How do I want them to feel and what do I want them to do?
So before I walk into a conference room where I might get questions or be asked for feedback, I think, what do I want this audience to know? How do I want them to feel and what do I want them to do? By focusing on relevance and by focusing on your goal, you will become more concise and clear. And if you can then convey your message in a structure, like we just talked about, that's
how you truly become relevant and focused. And it makes sense because in this podcast when we first joined, I was like, hey, it's a lot of entrepreneurs, and then you decided out of all examples to talk about the pitching example. Yes.
Because it felt like it would be very relevant for our audience. And as I said. Oh, meta right now, yeah, exactly what I did.
Yeah.
So one of the exercises you suggest to help us with focus is called a brevity challenge. Can you tell us about that? Yes. So most of us as I said, say more than we need to do. And so we can actually challenge ourselves to say what we're saying with fewer words.
This is a game that comes from the world of improvisation, where you start by saying something and then you cut it in half and then you cut it in half again. So a great way to do this is to look at something you've written, maybe even a text or a document or something and challenge yourself to say it in half the number of words. How would you do that?
And again, I'm not saying that whatever the result of that is in half number of words is the right way to do it. But what we're training our brain in this brevity example is we're training to prioritize. Here's a great use for AI, by the way. If you've written something and email a document, put it in AI and say, make it half
as long or high line just the key elements and then look at what it comes out with. I'm not saying to leverage what it comes out with. But just look at what it has done to make it more concise and then use that as a reference point. Oh, you know what it did?
“It cut out all the big words or you know what it did?”
It took all of the action verbs and put them up front. So you begin to see how you can prioritize and get briefer in what you say.
So whenever you write something, you can always challenge yourself and say, how would I
say this in half as long? And that by training that brain, by training that process, you train your brain to do that in real time. I know Mark Twain, I think has this quote writing is easy. You just got to cross out all the wrong words or something like that.
Absolutely. He's got wonderful things about all about communication, but it's about self-editing, but doing it very quickly and the more you practice it, the better you get at it. How do we get better at reading the room in business situations? Yes.
Yes. So my podcast is Think Fast Talk Smart, the book is Think Faster Talk Smarter. The Think Fast and Think Faster part are all about pattern recognition. And we have to remind ourselves that whenever we're communicating patterns or it play. And we have to be looking at those patterns and cataloging those patterns.
Many of us are in repetitive situations. We have meetings with the same people over and over or we do similar tasks like you interview, now you interview different people, but you're interviewing. And you can begin to look and notice patterns. Many of us are just so focused on getting through our communication that we don't spend
time focusing on the patterns. And if we can train ourselves to look at those patterns, it helps us read the room.
“That's what reading the room is, it's pattern recognition.”
So we might notice that 10 minutes into most of our meetings, the energy level dips. Well that's a pattern. And I can notice, hey we're coming up on 10 minutes, maybe I should do something different. So reading the room to me is all about just observing what's going on in the moment and then reflecting on it after the fact and coming up with a plan on how to deal with it
in the future. So we have to take the time to get a little meta in our communication to observe what's going on and then to really reflect and then be prepared to adjust an adapt when we see those things play out.
I remember one of the first interviews that I ever did on this podcast was with Chase Hughes.
And he's just like behavioral expert and I remember he told me if people start blinking really fast, it means that they're not paying attention, right? And that like if somebody's blinking normally, that means that they're engaged. But if they start blinking really fast, it kind of means that they're not paying attention. And then of course if they're looking around like other shoes or like not.
Well, I'm just going to stare the whole time so you think I'm paying attention to it. Yes. Now you're right.
“But you have to observe that you have to notice that right in order to act on it.”
Yeah. Yeah. How about when we're negotiating? I know that's a big thing also for entrepreneurs. When we're negotiating or trying to convince even like our partner of something, how should
we communicate? Oh, this is a big topic on I think fast talk smart is all about communication tips. And we've spent a lot of time talking about negotiations. So I've talked a lot of experts as I know you have. Let me summarize a couple of things that I've taken away from all of my interviews.
First and foremost, we have to know what we want.
What is it that we want and what is it that we're willing to give up and what is it we are non-negotiables. Many of us enter into negotiations without a clear what's our non-negotiable. And where can we negotiate? That's number one.
Number two, we have to take the time to think about the other person's position. How much do they prioritize what it is we're negotiating over. We have this assumption that we make that everybody that we're dealing with holds whatever they hold at the same level we do, right? And let me give an example.
My wife and I over the years have developed this technique so we don't fight and our negotiations
Go better.
When we have something that we might disagree on and have to negotiate about before we ever
“start we declare how important that is to us.”
So let me give a really mundane, simple example. Let's say we want to go out to dinner and my wife really wants to go to Italian food and I really want to do Mexican food. That could be a negotiation. That could be a fight.
But before we do it we simply say declare our priorities. She might say going to Italian food, that's an eight on a scale of one to ten. And for me Mexican foods of four, there's no no go sheet, there's no conflict. But what happens is I might assume, well, her desire is the same as my desire and I'm going to really push and now all of a sudden because I'm pushing her desire rises because
I hate nobody likes to be threatened. So figure out priorities as best you can because you might not even need to negotiate.
The third bit of advice is to think about the approach and metaphor that you're bringing
to the situation. Michelle Gelfin, who's a colleague of mine in Stanford's business school studies negotiation. And she says mind your metaphors, a lot of us when we approach negotiation see it as a battle. See it as a fight. And when you see it that way, that changes your whole demeanor, how you approach it, the
words you use. But if you see it as a dance or as a conversation, that changes it as well or a problem to be solved. So think about how are you approaching it.
“And then the last thing, and I'm sure this isn't surprising, you have to approach from”
a place of listening. Many of us go in and say here are all the reasons we should do it my way. Start by listening. Start by asking questions that also connects you, but you get an idea of what's important. So if you follow those four steps, really know what your non-negotiables are, think about
the person's prioritization, how are you approaching it in terms of your mindset, your metaphor,
and then ultimately listening, you're going to negotiate better.
Okay, one of my last questions for you is about networking. A lot of us have to go to these networking events. How can we best prepare, like you mentioned, even though it's spontaneous, there's still preparation involved, and then how do we excel at small talk? So when you're networking, just like when you're interviewing, first and foremost, you should
be thinking about who are the people that are in the space or in the room or on the Zoom that you're connecting with. So do some research, reconnaissance and reflection about who the people are that you might be speaking to, because that will help you focus your content. And come up with themes that you want to get across.
“So in a networking environment, what are some key ideas I want to get across and share?”
And you can plan those in advance, whatever those are, you might want to share your opinions or you have strong opinions on AI or something going on in the news. That's your theme, and then stockpile some specific support for those themes, maybe it's a story you have, maybe it's some data you heard about, maybe it's a conversation you had with somebody else.
So you stockpile those. Think of it this way, you know, if you ever see a restaurant's kitchen and everybody's cooking fast and furious during a high peak time at the restaurant, they have everything prepared in advance, everything's pre chopped, pre sauteed, so they're just assembling. You can do the same thing, think about these themes, and then think about these different
types of support for those themes. So when I'm in the networking situation and somebody brings up a point, I could say, I can connect that point to this theme I wanted to get across, and I can pull in this example. So you've taken the pressure off of yourself to be, to originate in the moment, and instead you're just connecting and building, and that can actually help you feel better, and it allows
you to be more agile and spontaneous. Think about this, an athlete does drills for certain aspects of the game, you know, professional basketball players do a lot of free throws, right, or they do a lot of positional work. So if I'm in this position and the ball comes to me in this way, I shoot it in that way. That's what you're doing.
So when it happens, you're free to respond, but you've done that pre-work. So have a clear theme, have some supporting material that you can pull into that theme, and then when it comes to small talk directly, start with questions or observations. Ask somebody a question, or observe something that's happening in the environment, just comment on it.
I made a great, good friend, simply by standing in line at a conference. I didn't know anybody. I looked around and I noticed lots of people were dressed in blue. It wasn't a uniform. It just happened to be coincidence.
I turned to the guy, I said, I didn't get the memo on wearing blue. He looked around and said, you're right, everybody's wearing blue. Started a great conversation. We've now become friends when I travel to where he lives. I visit him all the time.
It started simply with an observation. The last thing I'll say is the thing that challenges many people in small talk is getting out of it. How do you end it? Rachel Greenwald, if I mentioned earlier, taught me this technique.
She calls it the white flag, not for surrender, but in auto racing, the white flag is what you wave right before you end the race. So when you want to end small talk, most of us just rely on biology.
I'm hungry.
I'm thirsty. I have to go to the bathroom. It's awkward. Instead, you wave the white flag. You signal you're going to leave in a little bit.
If you and I were talking, I might say, I've really enjoyed this conversation in a few minutes. I'm going to go over there and talk to people. But before I leave, I want to ask you one more question about something you did on a recent podcast. So do you see what I've done there?
I've signaled that I'm going to leave soon, so you can prepare yourself. It's not a surprise, but I dive in for just a little bit more information. So before you start, you do your stockpiling in your themes, and you now know a way to end. It makes networking and small talk so much easier.
Oh my gosh, that was such a good advice.
I don't do this on purpose, I never did it on purpose, but because I go speak at so many
podcasts conferences, what happens is I'm preparing these like awesome presentations, and I'm pulling all this data, and then I really do, like the whole time, I'm just like touting what I learned in my presentation to everybody when I'm doing small talk, and that's my theme, and I never realized that I'm actually doing that. So in your book, you talk about an NPR journalist, who has a killer last question that
she likes to ask her interviewies.
“Can you tell us about this killer last question, and why it works?”
This is Deborah Schiffran, you're talking about, Deborah is also a colleague at Stanford. And before I tell you the question, her goal is to give people an opportunity to say more. So a lot of us in our dialogue, we ask a question, they respond, we ask a question. But if you actually pause for a moment, and you ask people, and you just give them an opportunity, to say more.
So not only does she say, is there anything else you'd like to say? Her magic question is, what is there anything more you'd like to add? She also builds in a pause. So when somebody's done answering a question, if you pause just a little bit before you ask the next question or comment on it, you give people space.
We are so busy, and our attention is so pulled in different directions. So the space to say more is a gift. And so if you allow people more space, you actually show that you care, that you want to learn more, and that you want to connect. So I encourage all of you, when you were having deep meaningful conversations or want
to have deep meaningful relationships, pause a little bit, give people space, and really listen to what they say, and it will transform those relationships.
“So we're going to get mad at again, is there anything important that I neglected to ask?”
Well, thank you for that opportunity. I think one of the things we did not talk about that is important for us to think about is not just what you say, but how you say it. We need to be thinking about our body and our voices when we communicate. So it's not just feeling comfortable and confident speaking in the moment.
It is appearing comfortable and confident. So let me share just a couple bits of advice about what we can do with our body and our voices. First and foremost, you want to be big. Many of us when we get nervous or feeling threatened, we make ourselves small.
So the best thing you can do is take your shoulder blades and just pull them down, make yourself broad. I'm not pushing my elbows back. I'm not puffing my chest out. I just pull my shoulder blades down, and I make myself look bigger.
You look more confident. You want to hold your head straight and not tilted. I'm not saying be stiff and rigid. Just make yourself big when you speak very your voice. If I were to have spoken like this for this entire interview, people would have left
a long time ago. Our brains are wild for novelty, things that change. So add emotive words. If you are somebody who doesn't have a lot of variation, add adjectives and add verbs.
So I would never say I'm really excited to be here.
No, I'm really excited. So emphasize those words. So the one thing we didn't talk about is how you say what you say and we need to remember that. And the single easiest way to work on this is to record yourself, either through voice
memo or through video, it really easy to do that these days and watch. It's painful to watch yourself, but when you do, you'll see these things that work for you and things that you might want to change. All of my MBA students, I teach whenever they do a presentation. I make them watch themselves without listening to it, and then I make them listen themselves
without watching it and then do both together. And while they hate it, they love it because they learn so much and they actually are able to change. Got it. Yeah, that'd be really painful, like for instance, like when I listen back to my interviews
“and I'm like, I hate this, but you have to do it.”
You have to do it to him for you. It's the burden of being a podcast or you have to listen and watch, but my hunch is, Paula, you've probably changed some of your communication based on what you've seen. Of course. Of course.
So Matt, this has been such an incredible discussion.
Like I mentioned, I'm so excited to just like go back to your book and study it to the
Nail.
It's called Think Faster Talks Martyr.
“I always want my show with two questions that I ask all of my guests.”
So the first one is what is one actionable thing my young and profiteers can do today to
become more profitable tomorrow. Focus on your communication. With the end of every day, take 30 seconds to think about what is something that went well in my communication today and what is something I'd like to improve by simply taking time to catalog what works for you and really lean into that and take the things that
challenge you and start fixing that, working on it, can help every day I do this. And on the weekends, I go back and look at everything and then I set a plan for myself. So I am constantly working and honing on my communication and it will help you be more
profitable, it'll help you connect better with people and ultimately help you feel better
about the relationships you have.
“And what is your secret to profiting in life in this can go beyond financial and business?”
Being open to opportunity, I rarely say no. I say yes to many opportunities and my life has unfolded really pleasantly and in great ways simply because many people's natural responses to say no to be protective and I like
to approach things by with curiosity and openness.
So I encourage everybody to do that. It has been my superpower where I have looked for opportunity and driven towards it.
“And where can everybody learn more about you, tell us about your podcast and everything”
like that? Oh, thank you for the opportunity. This has been fantastic. So the podcast is called Think Fast Talk Smart. It is 20 minute episodes about communication, all aspects of it.
We've been around for almost five years, lots of episodes, check us out at fastersmartor.io where everywhere you get your podcasts and you're including YouTube, check out the book. Think faster, talk smarter, you can get it wherever you get your books, really trying to help people hone and develop their communication and improve their careers. Amazing.
Matt, I had such a fun time in this conversation. I personally learned so much. I feel like you're going to impact me for many years to come just with this conversation. So thank you for your time today. Halla, thank you.
This was a true delight. You are a master at what you do.
