How to speak more confidently and persuasively | Matt Abrahams (professor, speaker, author)

Matt Abrahams: Visualization is a really useful technique and you see yourself not just in the moment of speaking, but getting up to the stage, seeing it being well received, thinking about how you step off the stage. We see athletes do this kind of thing all the time, and there’s good research to say that this desensitizes people.

Guest Intro and Episode Overview

Lenny Rachitsky: Most of the public speaking we do is on the spot. It’s not often you give a prepared talk.

Matt Abrahams: You actually have to prepare to be spontaneous. And that’s counterintuitive, but when you think about it in athletics or jazz music, it’s like of course you would prepare and practice.

Easing Public Speaking Anxiety

Lenny Rachitsky: Are there any other techniques that you love that you find people find really helpful in calming their anxiety?

Visualization as a Desensitization Tool

Matt Abrahams: Strive for connection over perfection by daring to be dull. Just answer the question. Just give the feedback. Just be engaged in the small talk. By doing that, you dial down the volume of self-evaluation, freeing up resources that can be used to really help you succeed.

Daring to Be Mediocre

Lenny Rachitsky: Today my guest is Matt Abrahams. Matt is a professor at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business where he teaches a very popular class on communication and public speaking. He’s also the host of the incredibly popular podcast, Think Fast, Talk Smart; and the author of the very popular book, Think Faster and Talk Smarter. Matt also coaches people one-on-one on public speaking and communication skills. And in our conversation we focus on the two areas that people most need help with. One, reducing their anxiety before and during any form of public speaking, and getting better at speaking on the spot, including giving better toasts, giving feedback, doing Q&A, and even apologizing.

Like we talk about in the actual conversation, speaking well is a superpower in your career for interviewing, for being great in meetings, for pitching your manager on ideas, to leading teams. And the skill becomes even more important as you grow in your career. The good news is that you can get better at it with a bit of help. I’ve worked on this a lot over the course of my career and I still get really nervous before big talks and even before every podcast episode, but many of these techniques I actually put into practice and I share that in our conversation. If you pick just a couple things from this episode to put into practice, you’ll become a better communicator, you’ll be less nervous, and you’ll get better at dealing with on-the-spot moments.

If you enjoy this podcast, don’t forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. It’s the best way to avoid missing feature episodes and it helps the podcast tremendously. With that, I bring you Matt Abrahams after a short word from our sponsors.

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Matt, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast.

Matt Abrahams: Lenny, I am excited for our conversation and thank you for having me.

Reframing Anxiety as Excitement

Lenny Rachitsky: Thank you for being here. I’m even more excited for the conversation. So what I want to do with our time today is there’s two areas I want to focus. One is talking about techniques to help people manage anxiety when public speaking. And two is helping people get better at speaking on the spot, which you wrote a whole book about. And if you think about it, I think that’s like most of the public speaking we do is on the spot. It’s not often you give a prepared talk. It’s usually like you said, Q&A or a or toast someone wants to give you or ask for feedback or things like that. So I’m excited to dig into those things. How do that sound broadly?

Using Mantras for Positive Self-Talk

Matt Abrahams: Absolutely, I look forward to that and those are topics I’m very excited to talk about, have done a lot of research in and look forward to sharing more.

Lenny Rachitsky: I suspected as much. Okay, so let’s talk about anxiety. You have a bunch of really novel techniques in your book and your podcast for calming your body down, calming your mind down when you’re planning to give a talk, when you’re actually about to give a talk, when you’re giving a talk. And a lot of these I haven’t actually seen anywhere else and I’ve used a few of them and they are really great. So what I was thinking we’d do is let me go through the ones that I found most useful and interesting and just share your advice on those and then see if there’s any I missed and then maybe add those at the end. How’s that?

Normalizing Your Anxiety

Matt Abrahams: That sounds great. That sounds great. I love that you’ve applied some of these techniques and found value from them.

Lenny Rachitsky: I’ll talk about this, I’ll talk about this. Okay, first of all, just to catch on this, you’re not a fan of the picture people in your audience naked approach, correct?

Reshaping Your Communication Style

Matt Abrahams: The Brady Bunch advice is not good advice. I don’t know about you and I don’t know anybody who could imagine seeing a bunch of people in their underwear and feel more comfortable with that. And I think if you do, there are other issues you need to be dealing with than beyond speaking anxiety.

Lenny Rachitsky: Yeah, it feels like highly inappropriate now, just that idea, trying to picture everyone-

Shifting Your Focus

Matt Abrahams: No, but underlying that if you’ll give me a moment, there is some value. This notion of visualization as a tool of desensitization actually can be very helpful, but you’re not visualizing the audience half naked. What you’re doing is you’re visualizing yourself in that space. You’re visualizing the audience responding to you and what you’re saying. So just like a pilot might do a flight simulator, having a visualization can actually really help you feel more comfortable and confident. It literally puts you in the room even though you’re not there. And there’s some tools and I’m fascinated by these tools that are virtual reality tools that can also serve to desensitize you. So this notion of seeing your audience in advance of actually speaking can actually impact your level of comfort. It’s let’s keep everybody clothed and let’s keep them all focused on your topic.

Embodied Cognition and Breathing Techniques

Lenny Rachitsky: Well, let’s actually talk about this one while we’re on it because I think this is a really powerful technique. An idea just to kind of summarize, you picture ahead of time, what it’s going to look like and feel like. You talking, looking at the audience. You talk about that and just how to go about using that technique.

Techniques for Staying Present

Matt Abrahams: Yeah, absolutely. And this is some of the oldest research on public speaking anxiety. It was research done in the ’80s from the University of Oregon. So visualization, what it does is it allows you to see the event in a way that you have much more control over it so you can think about it. So a good visualization involves some deep breathing to calm yourself. Either you close your eyes or you just look at a picture. Maybe you can get a picture of the environment you’re speaking in. I often recommend speakers see the room even if they’re not physically present, but get a picture online or some way envision yourself in the room, envision yourself in the room with the people you’ll be speaking to. Often we know the individuals or some of them. We can also go online and figure out who they are.

So visualization is a really useful technique and you see yourself not just in the moment of speaking but getting up to the stage, delivering the presentation, seeing it being well received, thinking about how you step off the stage. And by taking yourself through that you in essence are a dress rehearsal even though you’re not physically in the room. And there’s good research to say that this desensitizes people. We see athletes do this kind of thing all the time where they’ll do visualization to help them and it really does work. And like I said, there are virtual tools now that can help you do this where you can actually program it to have a certain size audience. You can even program some of these to have a responsive audience or a distracted audience. All of this in service of just preparing you for what you’re really going to see.

And the bottom line is this, what you’re doing for yourself is making sure it’s not new and novel. It’s something been there, done that, even though if it was virtual or visualized in your mind, to help you feel better about the circumstance. It gives you a sense of agency.

Lenny Rachitsky: I’ve done this myself actually. I gave a TEDx talk once and it was probably the scariest talk I’ve ever given and I spent a lot of time doing this and it doesn’t actually have to take that much time. It could be like a five-minute thing where you sit down, calm yourself, and then just picture the stuff. And ideally you do it a couple times, I imagine.

Swearing to Relieve Anxiety

Matt Abrahams: That’s right. Good for you. And congratulations on giving a TEDx talk. That is a high-stakes talk.

Impromptu Speaking Techniques

Lenny Rachitsky: Thank you. That was before TEDx became super uncool. It was still pretty early. It’s out there in the internet in case people want to find it.

What, So What, Now What Structure

Matt Abrahams: Don’t say they’re uncool. I’m doing one in two weeks.

How to Remember These Structures

Lenny Rachitsky: They’re so cool. That is, they are cool.

Practicing Outside of Work

Matt Abrahams: That’s right.

Small Talk Tips and Self-Disclosure

Lenny Rachitsky: They’re incredible. I’m impressed.

Matt Abrahams: I’ve done a number of them and I’ve coached many people and I think that there’s a lot of value that they can provide people.

Techniques for Impromptu Feedback

Lenny Rachitsky: There is. There is. I think they’ve just become slightly less cool because now there’s a lot of them, but they’re still incredibly cool, I’m very proud.

Matt Abrahams: Okay, thank you.

Techniques for Toasts and Tributes

Lenny Rachitsky: So on the visualization piece, I think we have a lot of techniques, but just on this one, part of it is continue to calm yourself as you’re doing it. I think that’s really important because you want to help your body not connect to the stress that you’re feeling like you’re going to experience.

Handling Q&A Sessions

Matt Abrahams: That’s correct. Any distance you can give yourself from the anxiety that you’re feeling is helpful and there are lots of techniques that help give you a little bit of distance and visualization is one of those.

Effective Apology Techniques

Lenny Rachitsky: One of my favorite techniques that it might be in this bucket, it might be on the spot advice bucket, but I think it works great here is what you call dare to be dull. Can you talk about that because I love that?

Resources and Contact Information

Matt Abrahams: Yeah. I really leaned into this with the spontaneous speaking work that I’ve been doing as of late, but it applies to anybody speaking. This is a notion that comes from the world of improvisation and when people hear improv, they often think of standup comedy, having to be funny. And that’s not what improv is all about. Improv is all about being present, being collaborative, being open, and it’s a wonderful tool just to help you get present oriented. Think of it as like meditation in action, but also it teaches lots of valuable skills for communication.

When we communicate, especially spontaneously, we want to do it really well. We want to answer the question with the best answer, we want to give the right feedback, we want to be the most interesting in small talk and that puts a lot of pressure on ourselves. And you can think of it this way, it’s really taxing our cognitive bandwidth.

Your brain in many ways is like a CPU, a computer. It’s not a perfect analogy, but it works. And if I am constantly judging and evaluating everything I am saying against some standard of perfection, whatever that is, it means I have a limited amount of bandwidth to focus on what I’m actually saying and connecting to my audience. If you have a laptop or a phone that has lots of windows and apps open, each one of those is performing less well because of the other ones being open. So I often say strive for connection over perfection by daring to be dull. Just get the task done, just answer the question, just give the feedback, just be engaged in the small talk. And by doing that you dial down the volume of self-evaluation, freeing up resources that can be used to really help you succeed. So dare to be dull is all about giving yourself permission to just be present and do what’s needed. And when you do that you find that you actually do quite a good job at it.

Lenny Rachitsky: The last point I think is really important, you talk about this in your book. Is when you start with, “Okay, I’m just going to say something, it’ll be fine.” Without that pressure, you end up saying something better and more interesting and more insightful because you’re less nervous about it.

Matt Abrahams: That’s exactly right. We are often our biggest impediments to good communication because of the anxiety we bring to the party.

Lenny Rachitsky: That’s awesome. And I think this can apply to prepared talks too. When you’re preparing a deck, don’t put this pressure on yourself, “This has to be the best talk ever.” Just like, “I’m going to do my best. Let me just start with something that’s good enough.” People learn something and then from that, their editing ends up leading to something great in my experience.

Matt Abrahams: Right.

Lenny Rachitsky: Awesome. Okay, let’s go to the next technique, and this is another one I’ve practiced and another guest on the podcast actually suggested this and these two remind me of using this one, which is to tell yourself when you’re going to be giving a talk. “I’m excited. This is going to be a lot of fun. I’m so excited to give this talk.” And reframe it from, “I’m nervous,” to like, “No, I’m excited. This is going to be amazing.” Can you talk about that technique?

Matt Abrahams: Absolutely. So this is one of many cognitive reframing techniques. It is often attributed to my friend and colleague, Alison Wood Brooks, she’s at Harvard Business School who did some research into this. And what she found is…

Well, first take a step back. When you get physically aroused by anxiety, you’re under that fight or flight threat response. It turns out that same response happens to your body when you’re excited. The human body has pretty much just one arousal response. Our heart beats faster, we breathe more shallow, we get a little shaky, but the big difference is how we label that. So if I say, “Hey Lenny, guess what? Your colleague couldn’t show up today and you need to go teach the class or you need to go give that presentation.” You might feel your heart rate go up, get a little shaky, sweat on your brow and you’re seeing that as negative. But if I said, “Hey Lenny, guess what? You just won the lottery.” Same physiological response would happen, but you would see that likely as more positive.

So how we label the arousal matters and what Alison’s research and others have followed up with suggests is that when we feel those symptoms of anxiety, rather than seeing it as negative, say, “This is exciting. I get to share my point of view. I get to demonstrate my value.” And in so doing by seeing it as more positive, it causes us by definition to relax. And her research fascinatingly found that people actually were perceived as communicating better. And again that’s because that pressure was taken off of them. So I challenge everybody to think about what are the exciting elements of the communication opportunities you have and really lean into those. And when you feel those anxiety symptoms, remind yourself these are signs of excitement. This is me being excited about sharing this information and it can really help.

Lenny Rachitsky: This is another one I’ve done and it super works. It sounds so trivial and so like, “Why would this do anything?” But I find you just say that just like, “I’m going to have so much fun. This is going to be exciting.” It does make an impact. So another one to try, even though it sounds really trivial.

Kind of along these lines, there’s another technique you recommend which is a mantra, having a mantra that you repeat to yourself. I don’t know if it’s kind of the same general idea, but you have a couple mantras that you recommend to people like “I have value to add” and things like that. What advice do you have there?

Matt Abrahams: Yes, thank you. And that’s mine. The one that you shared is, “I have value to add.” So if we were to really listen to the voice in our heads when it comes to communication, we say a lot of negative things to ourselves. We say things like, “I’m not prepared. I’m not going to be as good as this person. I’m an imposter.” We carry around with us a lot of this chatter that actually sets us up to not do well or to be more nervous. So if we can actually change that talk track, it can help us.

I’m not saying you have to go to an extreme and say, “I’m going to be the best communicator ever.” Rather you can simply say as I do and as you alluded to. What I’ll say right before I speak is, “I have value to bring.”

Often when we are in communicative situations, especially at work, people want to hear from us. We’ve been invited to speak, we’re on the agenda for the meeting. There is value people can take from our communication and we just have to remind ourselves of that. So having some little mantra that you can say that’s not over the top but just makes sense. It could be as simple as you’ve got this, or I’m prepared, or I know my stuff. And I actually encourage people to write it on a post-it note if you’re old school, sometimes people put it into their phones as a reminder. So like a minute or two minutes before they’re set to give the presentation or participate in the meeting, it flashes up. We just have to turn off or turn down the noise of that internal negative self-talk.

Lenny Rachitsky: What are some other mantras that you found helpful or that people use?

Matt Abrahams: They’re very personal to different people. I was just coaching a senior leader the other day who his mantra was, “Last time this went well.” He’s a leader, he does a lot of the same presentations and just by saying last time this went well, reminds him that it’s likely to go well this time. We are very susceptible to catastrophizing when we’re very nervous about things, especially when we’re exposed in front of people. Not in the Brady Bunch exposure we talked about earlier, but when we’re out there speaking or communicating and simply reminding ourselves that often they go very well is helpful.

Lenny Rachitsky: Yeah. There’s another one that I think you shared which is, “It’s not about me, it’s about my content.”

Matt Abrahams: Yes, exactly. That’s another one. That’s a great one. It can be very helpful.

Lenny Rachitsky: The one you shared about, “I’ve got this,” reminds me, my wife took a course with the Artist’s Way writer, Julia Cameron I think is her name. And she has this piece of advice where you name your critic, your inner critic that’s always telling you to stop doing stuff. You name him or her. So I name mine Jim. And then when he or she is giving you things you don’t want to hear, you’re just like, “Jim, I got this. Jim, I don’t need this advice.”

Matt Abrahams: There is a lot of evidence on personifying the things that challenge us and then having conversations with it. It’s a way of rationalizing some of the things that we do that are quite negative. So something there for sure to be thinking about.

Lenny Rachitsky: There we go. Bonus advice. That was-

Matt Abrahams: Bonus advice, yes.

Lenny Rachitsky: I didn’t expect that.

Matt Abrahams: And the cool thing that what you’re highlighting is there is a lot of advice out there on how to manage anxiety. Many of us feel like we’re the only people who feel this nervous because we see our colleagues, our friends or Ted talks as you were talking about, and we see these people communicating just so effortlessly. Often a lot of work went into that and we don’t see that work. And sometimes just knowing that others experience it makes us feel better.

If you’ll allow me, I’ll tell this very quick story. I was in the San Francisco Airport, this was several years ago after my Speaking Up Without Freaking Out book came out, and my name was called over the PA system at the airport counter. The seat that I was supposed to sit in was broken and they wanted to talk to me about it. So when I came away from that, somebody came up to me and said, “Hey, you’re the guy that wrote that book on speaking anxiety.” I said, “Yes.” And I said, “What do you know about it?” He goes, “Oh, I bought the book.” I said, “Oh, was it helpful?” He says, “Incredibly helpful, but I didn’t read it.” I’m like, “This is weird. So you’re telling me the book was helpful and you didn’t read it?” And so I said, “Tell me more.” And he said, “Just knowing that a book like that existed made me feel better because I don’t know you and I know you certainly didn’t write the book for me. So it implies that lots of people have this issue.”

And just by normalizing the anxiety, which by the way is the normal condition. Those of us who study this believe it is innate to being human to feel nervous communicating in front of others. So sometimes just reminding yourself that you’re not alone and that others have it can actually help reduce the pressure that we feel.

Lenny Rachitsky: This is such an important point that I am kicking myself for not starting with this also because I think this is something people don’t realize. They see all their execs at their company speaking incredibly well, so confidently, so articulately and just like, “Oh my God, how will I ever be someone like that?” Is there anything more you can share of just like you have tons of students that go through your class, you see these issues, they’re more transparent, you think about their challenges, I imagine. Is there anything more you could share there to help people feel better? Like this is most people, even when you see someone amazing at speaking, they are also probably nervous.

Matt Abrahams: With regard to that, I think we just need to talk about it more. We need to share about it. I mean, I always will share that I still have anxiety in speaking in certain situations and it’s something that’s taken me a long time to work on. I also help people understand that it’s not a light switch. It’s not like you either have it or you don’t. It’s a process. And so the idea is over time, we will feel less nervous if we apply some of these principles you and I are talking about.

A great technique to help people that often isn’t talked about is many of us feel much more comfortable in conversation than we do in presenting. And conversation is a back and forth. So you can actually set up a lot of your communication situations, a presentation, a meeting, et cetera, as conversations. And you don’t even have to have a conversation with the audience. You can simply have it with yourself. For example, what would it be like if you were to start a presentation by saying, “Today I have three questions I’d like to answer. Question number one is…” And you state the question and then you answer it. I am actually having a conversation with myself in that moment where I am asking myself a question. I happen to know the answer, I give the answer. This again, just like the reframing as excitement versus anxiety, this is a reframe. I’m not presenting, I’m having a conversation. And in so doing it ratchets down that anxiety.

So we need to talk about it. We need to share our experiences with developing anxiety management plans. We realize it’s not binary, it’s not I have it or I don’t. And we start seeing where we feel more comfortable and how can we bring that comfort level into the types of situations that make us nervous, like simply having a conversation with yourself.

Lenny Rachitsky: You have another technique I think that’s different, maybe it’s exactly the same, which is to ask a question of somebody else as you’re talking, which is I think deflects attention from you. Can you talk about that?

Matt Abrahams: Yeah. So we talked about the way we desensitize through visualization. The other thing we can do is distract.

I coached a very senior leader at Google who got very nervous when he was up in front of people, and what we did is we distract his audience. So he would start every single presentation saying these words, “Good morning, let’s watch this video.” And he’d show a 30-second video that was on topic about something they were going to talk about in the meeting. And when the video stopped, he would then facilitate a discussion of what that video was about and then he would ease into his content. So he went from being a presenter to being a facilitator or somebody who was having a conversation with the audience. That made him feel so much better.

And so all of us can do things that can distract our audience. Now when I say distract, I don’t mean take them on a tangent that’s not relevant to what you’re saying, but maybe you ask them a question, maybe you tell them a story, maybe you show them a video or ask them to read something. So there are lots of things that you can do that will help get the attention off you for just a little bit so that you can then focus on what works for you or take that deep breath that’ll help calm you down. All of these are very useful techniques.

Lenny Rachitsky: Yeah, it’s interesting once you start talking, it’s okay usually. It’s the beginning part that you need [inaudible 00:24:40].

Matt Abrahams: Yeah, most people are most nervous one minute before speaking and the first minute of speaking. And if you can find ways to get yourself through that, then it becomes much easier for most people. There are some people who that’s not true for, but for most people that’s the way it works.

Lenny Rachitsky: Awesome. Okay, next technique that actually another guest mentioned, and we spent a bunch of time on this, a guest named Johnny Miller, which is a breathing technique. And just to give a little context from what he taught us is that 80% of our neurons go from our body to our brain versus 20% is our brain telling our body what to feel. And so this research shows that what our body’s feeling is what our brain’s going to think. So if our body’s acting nervous, we’re going to think, oh, we’re nervous. And if you change the state of your body, your mind feels different.

Matt Abrahams: I love this stuff. This research, embodied cognition is what it’s called, is fascinating to me. I’ll share one of my most favorite studies in this. There was a researcher at Duke, I think it was Duke, who… The only experimental variation that he did is he had people hold something that was cold in their hand, like an iced coffee versus a warm coffee. And then he asked the participants to make ratings of people. And if you were holding something cold, you saw the person as a colder person, as more aloof and more distant, and if you were holding something warm, you saw them as more collaborative and embracing. I find this stuff fascinating. What our body feels, our minds think.

Lenny Rachitsky: Awesome. So along those lines, there’s a technique that you recommend that he recommended, but I think it’s a great reminder of the double exhale where you breathe in and then you exhale twice as long. Can you talk about that and tell people about it?

Matt Abrahams: Yeah. Breathing is very helpful in managing so many of our anxiety symptoms. It slows down the heart rate, makes our voice sound more normal because when we get nervous, we breathe shallow and that changes… Our voice is a wind instrument, it changes the way we sound, can reduce some of the shakiness. So deep belly breathing, the kind you do if you’ve ever done yoga or tai chi, qigong, really important to do and there are a whole bunch of variations on it. The one you’re talking about is the double inhalation where you’re taking an inhale in until you feel completely full and then you sneak in a little extra air and then you take a long exhale. People call it box breathing and other types of breathing.

The bottom line is this, what’s critical to the relaxation response is the exhale. Lots of ways to inhale, lots of ways to exhale. You want your exhale to be longer than the inhale. The magic of the relaxation happens during the exhale. So I have a rule of thumb, I jokingly call it a rule of lung. You want your exhale to be twice as long as your inhale. So if you take a three count in, even if you sneak in a little extra air as we were talking about, take a six count out. And it is that way that you will feel… Not only will your body physiologically feel less stress, you’ll be more focused in a present moment and not catastrophizing about all the things that might happen in the future.

Lenny Rachitsky: Great. Yeah, so it’s like another example of this sounds so trivial and why would breathing differently do have any impact on my nervousness? But one, there’s all this research that shows that it does, and two, if you try it, and this is another one I use, is it actually works very quickly and you do it a few times and like, wow, I feel really different.

Matt Abrahams: Absolutely.

Lenny Rachitsky: It is interesting you put these together. From the way I’ve seen it, these are two different techniques, but I’ve never tried them together. One is… I think Huberman is big on this one. All his clips are always talking about this. One of you inhale fully and then you inhale a little bit more and there’s some capillaries or something in your lungs that fill up that-

Matt Abrahams: [inaudible 00:28:12]. Yeah.

Lenny Rachitsky: And then there’s the 4, 4, 8 is the way this other guest shared is like breathe in four seconds, hold it four seconds, breathe out for eight seconds. But I’m going to try both. Wow. That’s going to double up my calmness.

Matt Abrahams: You’ll be so mellow, nothing will bother you.

Lenny Rachitsky: So mellow. Okay. Are there any other techniques that you love that you find people find really helpful in calming their anxiety?

Matt Abrahams: Well, so the first book had 50 techniques and not all 50 techniques work for everybody. One that I personally think is a lot of fun is getting present oriented because when I’m in the present, by definition I’m not worried about the future. And many of our anxiety comes from our fear of a potential negative future outcome like, “I’m not going to achieve my goal.” So if I can do anything to be in the present moment, that helps me out a lot.

Something I do as part of my personal anxiety management plan is I say tongue twisters. Tongue twisters for me are a great way to get present oriented. You can’t say it right if you don’t say the tongue twister if you’re not focused on the present moment. And it also warms up your voice. A lot of nervous speakers get so inside their head that they don’t warm up their voice. And we all know if you’ve ever done any exercise or competed in any sports, you should warm up first. We have this mistaken notion that we can go from silence to brilliance without warming up. And I like saying tongue twisters out loud to get present oriented and to warm up my voice. So that’s one that I often recommend. People think it’s silly, but I have people who are like, that really works. It really helps me to get centered and to warm up. And so I like that one a lot.

Lenny Rachitsky: Well, let’s share a couple of tongue twisters. What are some recommendations?

Matt Abrahams: I will only share my tongue twister, I say Lenny, if you promise to say it after me.

Lenny Rachitsky: Absolutely. I’m so ready.

Matt Abrahams: This is my favorite tongue twister. It takes five seconds to say, it’s three phrases long. And if you say it wrong, you say a naughty word. So I’m going to be listening as for all your listeners. So are you prepared? So it goes as follows, I slit a sheet.

Lenny Rachitsky: I slit a sheet.

Matt Abrahams: A sheet I slit

Lenny Rachitsky: A sheet I slit.

Matt Abrahams: And on that slitted sheet I sit.

Lenny Rachitsky: And on that slitted sheet I sit.

Matt Abrahams: Very good. You didn’t say that naughty word. I’m sure you can imagine what it would’ve been.

Lenny Rachitsky: A lot of danger, a lot of [inaudible 00:30:26].

Matt Abrahams: A lot of danger. But in that moment you weren’t thinking about, what’s the next question I’m going to ask Matt? Or how much longer do we have in the podcast? No, you were simply focused on what we were saying and trying to say it without saying a naughty word. So that’s that [inaudible 00:30:39]-

Lenny Rachitsky: And not have to censor this podcast.

Matt Abrahams: I’ve only had to bleep one guest in all my years of doing this.

Lenny Rachitsky: Okay, cool. We’re going to link to that. Is there any other ones you want to share before we move on to getting better at speaking on the spot?

Matt Abrahams: Well, the last one I’ll say is, and this one is another one that falls in the kind of funny category, but there’s research that says that when you swear, curse, it actually helps you reduce anxiety. When you curse, you release a flood of neurochemicals that blunt out the neurochemicals associated with anxiety, cortisol being a big one. So you get a big dopamine hit, for example, serotonin when you swear. So I’m not saying get up on stage and drop an F-bomb, but my students love this. I mean, it’s like, “Matt’s giving me permission to swear.” And no, that’s not what I’m doing, but it’s an interesting technique that seems to help some people is to curse not necessarily in front of people, but that can help. And it also has an analgesic effect. It actually reduces pain as well.

Lenny Rachitsky: That’s interesting. I could see during birth women screaming curse words.

Matt Abrahams: Yeah. Well, I’m not going to say what I heard when my kids were born, but…

Lenny Rachitsky: But again, this could double up with the tongue twister where you just go for it and say-

Matt Abrahams: Yeah, every tongue twister has to start with Nantucket and then we’re good.

Lenny Rachitsky:

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Okay, let’s shift to talking about talking on the spot.

Matt Abrahams: I see you said shift very carefully. I appreciate that.

Lenny Rachitsky: Now we’re going to be so, so careful, I don’t want this podcast flagged and for adults only. Okay, shift to a new topic. You have a whole book about how to get better speaking on the spot. And I think why this is important is again, what I said at the beginning that I think most of our “public speaking” is not planned public speaking. There’s people asking for feedback in a meeting, people wanting you to give a toast, Q&A as we talked about. So what I want to do is you have advice for broadly getting better at these things and then you have advice for very specifically how to get better at giving better toast, doing better Q&A, getting better at small talk and things like that. So I want to start with the broad advice and then get into each of these. That sound good?

Matt Abrahams: Absolutely.

Lenny Rachitsky: How about you share your favorite techniques for broadly getting better at speaking on the spot, and then we’ll see where that goes?

Matt Abrahams: Sure. So the first thing in helping yourself feel better, speaking spontaneously, which is the vast majority of our communication, the plan presenting, the practiced pitch, the meeting with agenda pale in comparison to the times that we are spontaneously speaking. And the first thing that is important for everybody to know is we can all get better at it. That’s the fundamental bottom line. Many of us feel like we’re either born with the gift of gab or we’re not. And so the first thing we have to realize is we can get better at it.

The second big point to make is you actually have to prepare to be spontaneous. And that’s counterintuitive, but it is through preparation that we get better at it. And if you think about it, if you think about an athlete, when an athlete is doing their sport, they are being spontaneous, they are responding to the conditions that present themselves to them. What helps them do well is all the preparation and practice that they’ve done. So there are lots of analogs to this, but when we think about it in of communication, it seems foreign, but when you think about it in athletics or jazz music, it’s like of course you would prepare and practice. Those are the two big underlying principles to helping people get better.

The next level has to do with we have to attack both mindset and approach and the actual messaging itself. The only way I have found to help people get better at this is to look at how we approach it, our mindset, and then how we actually craft the messages through structure and focus that help us be better. So that’s the gradual process from the broadest level about how we have to go about making this better for ourselves.

Lenny Rachitsky: Maybe let’s dig into the structure.

Matt Abrahams: Sure.

Lenny Rachitsky: What is your advice for how to think about structuring if you’re on the spot, like, “Oh, shit, how do I share something smart [inaudible 00:36:22]?”

Matt Abrahams: See, the bad word came out, so you’re ready for my tongue twister. So structure is critical. In spontaneous speaking, most of us, because we feel the intense pressure, the anxiety we just talked about, we just spew out information, we list and itemize information. We take our audience on the journey of our own discovery of what we want to say as we’re saying it, and our brains are not wired for lists of information. In fact, Lenny, how many items do you need to buy from the grocery store before you actually have to physically write it down? For me it’s four. Anything over four, I’m going to forget something. Our brains aren’t wired for lists, right?

Lenny Rachitsky: Yeah.

Matt Abrahams: And so-

Lenny Rachitsky: I text myself.

Matt Abrahams: Yeah, right, exactly. Yeah, no, I’m old school. I actually put it on a piece of paper, but the point is that we’re not wired that way. Our brains are actually wired for story, for connection, a logical connection of ideas. So it’s about connecting those pieces together. So a structure is nothing more than a beginning, a middle, and an end. A package of information. The structure that almost everybody listening in is familiar with is one that comes from the world of advertising. Most advertisements are set up as problem, solution, benefit. There’s some problem in the world, here’s how we solve it with our product or service, and here’s how you benefit from it. That’s a structure. It’s a logical beginning, middle, and end. These items have a connection. So by finding a structure that you can rely on when put on the spot, it halves your burden.

When you’re put on the spot, you have to think about what to say and how to say it. The structure tells you how to say it, and then you just have to think about what to put into it. So it’s like having a recipe. If I have a recipe and I have good ingredients, I can cook a good meal. So there are lots of structures.

The whole second part of the book Think Faster, Talk Smarter is specific structures for specific situations, introducing yourself, making an apology, giving feedback. And I’m not saying every time you give an apology or give feedback that you have to follow these structures. It just gives you a place to go when you’re in that moment where you’re like, “Where do I go? How do I start?”

Lenny Rachitsky: Cool. So we’re going to talk about those examples. One of the structures that I liked that I wrote down is called prep, which is make your point, give a reason for making that point, give an example. And then what’s the last one point again?

Matt Abrahams: Yeah, restate your point. Review it.

Lenny Rachitsky: Restate your point. That feels like something that say in product teams can come up a lot is just like, here’s what I think, here’s why. Here’s an example and then let me just remind you again what the point I’m making.

Matt Abrahams: That’s right. Yes. I love prep and the structure I really like is a three-question structure: What? So what? Now what? And people on product teams I think could benefit so much from this. What is your product, your service, your offering, your update, your feedback? It’s the what of why you’re speaking. The so what is why is this important and relevant to the people you’re talking to or to your company or to prospective clients? And then the now what is what comes next. So on a product team, if you’re describing a feature, here’s what the feature is, here’s why it’s important, and here’s what we’re doing about it. If you’re giving an update in an update meeting, a standup that you’re having, here’s what I’m working on, here’s why it’s important, here’s what I’m doing next.

By packaging the information up in what, so what, now what, it becomes much more digestible, much more memorable. Just like prep. Prep works really well for a point you’re making. What, so what, now what works really well for a broader presentation, update, feedback session that you’re giving. So having a whole series of these tools in your toolkit can really make a difference.

Lenny Rachitsky: So we’ve talked about three structures so far. What, so what, now what; prep, which is make the point, give a reason example, and then restate the point; and then problem, solution benefit. So people listening to this it’s like, “Oh, amazing, all these structures are great.” Do you have any advice on how to remember these? You’re like, “Oh, Matt, what do you think of this design?” Like, “Oh, shit, which one should I go with?”

Matt Abrahams: I try to give each structure a catchy name. What, so what, now what rolls off the tongue. There’s a structure in the book for giving feedback called 4Is for Apologizing AAA. So part of it is just coming up with a mnemonic that works for you and you can name them whatever you want, but really the way to get familiar with them and to have them at the ready is to use them.

When I coach people on what, so what, now what, I encourage them at the end of a podcast they listen to or something they read, take a moment and say, “What was it about? Why is it important to me and what can I do with that information?” And if you do that, not only do you get better and more comfortable deploying that structure, but you also remember the material better because there’s a whole bunch of research that says when we interrogate the material that we listen to or read, we digest it and remember it more. So in 30 seconds you’re really helping yourself at least in two ways by getting the structure down and remembering more. So you have to put it into practice.

The other way to do it in which we do a lot in my classroom is we have people dissect communication. So you listen to somebody or you see it and you say, what structure did they use? So it’s about awareness building and then actually getting the reps. The only way you get better at communication, spontaneous or planned, is the way you get better at anything. Repetition, reflection, and feedback. You got to practice, you got to think about what worked or what didn’t, and then you have to get feedback from others. We are not always the best judges of our communication. And in so doing, repetition, reflection and feedback takes your communication to the next level.

Lenny Rachitsky: That’s a lot of work, Matt. That’s a lot of work.

Matt Abrahams: It is work. There is no shortcut.

Lenny Rachitsky: Got you.

Matt Abrahams: But that’s true with most things in life that are really important. There’s no shortcut.

Lenny Rachitsky: That’s right. That’s right. As people are thinking about this and listening to this, there’s your course, obviously that you teach at Stanford and only Stanford students can take that. There’s your book obviously. Is there anything else? If there’s nothing, that’s totally fine, that you point people to to actually practice these outside of the workplace? Are there courses that anyone can take that you recommend? Anything else you can point people to?

Matt Abrahams: Absolutely. There are a lot of resources out there. One, I’m a huge proponent and a former member of Toastmasters. I think Toastmasters is a wonderful organization designed primarily to give you the reps. They do some teaching, but it’s really to give you the reps. So I highly recommend Toastmasters.

Improvisation is another way to get comfortable with these skills. When people hear improv, they think, “Oh, I got to be funny and it’s about performing,” and it’s not. Improv is really just about being more comfortable, being present, and really focusing on collaborating with others.

And then there are courses. You mentioned obviously that people have to be MBA students to take my MBA class, but Stanford and other institutions have continuing studies classes or extension classes that are open to the community. So I, every quarter teach a class that’s open to anybody who registers all over the world. It’s virtual. I have students this very quarter who take a class on a Monday night Pacific Time, 7:00 PM. I’ve got somebody in Egypt, I have somebody in China. So there are ways to take advantage of things happening at universities without being an enrolled student. So I would point people to all of those. And then clearly listening to podcasts, reading books, checking out blogs and videos can be really helpful.

Lenny Rachitsky: I think to your point, it’s like you can read about this and listen to podcasts all you want, but you’re not going to actually get that much better. And with your course, I imagine there’s practice you’re doing as a part of the course.

Matt Abrahams: Everything is applied. The only way to get better at communication is to do communication, to watch communication. And that’s why in the books I write, I have this, try this. It’s literally put the book down, go do this and then come back because that’s how you learn communication. And so yes, any avenue to help you get the reps is going to be helpful.

Lenny Rachitsky: I’ll be honest, I did none of the try this. I’m just like, that’s too much work. So I think that’s why it’s important to take something where you have to do it because it’s too easy just like, yeah, yeah.

Matt Abrahams: Yeah. You’re not the first person to say that they don’t take the time to do that. There are others who say they really appreciate that. And for people such as yourself, at the very end of my book, I have a QR code that takes you to a bunch of videos. So if you don’t want to do it yourself, you can actually watch people do it or watch me do it. And so that’s at least better than not doing any of it.

Lenny Rachitsky: Awesome. I’ll also give a shout-out to Toastmasters. I did Toastmasters for a while and two things there. One is there’s a special focus on the spot speaking that’s a part of the sequence.

Matt Abrahams: They call them table topics.

Lenny Rachitsky: Table topics, yeah. And that’s like a 60-second, someone gets up and just has to talk on something. So it’s a big part of that method. Also, I did it for a long time and all I did was I was the counter or the timer. You can do it without having to give any talks for as long as you want. And it’s very cheap and they’re everywhere. There’s a local chapter wherever you are.

Matt Abrahams: Absolutely. And many companies sponsor their own Toastmasters groups, so that’s great. And they are very good at easing people into it. You’re not forced to do anything. And the same is with improv. A good improv teacher never forces anybody to do anything.

Lenny Rachitsky: Great. We went way off-topic, but let’s get back to the agenda at hand, which is let’s talk about specific situations and advice you have for getting better at these. So maybe we start with small talk and there’s one that I love and I find so important and so subtle, which is have comparable levels of disclosure. And the question basically is how do we get better at small talk? And here’s one technique.

Matt Abrahams: Yeah, so let me get to that point in a second because that’s a more refined point than some general principles. When it comes to small talk, many people dread small talk, they feel really awkward about it. I think small talk has a bad reputation, needs to be rebranded. I think a lot of big things happen in small talk. We learn about ourselves and others. We form and foster relationships. I challenge everybody listening to think about some of their friends, our closest friends. How did you meet them? Probably some component of small talk played a role, especially early in those relationships. So it does good things for us.

The best advice I have ever heard for small talk came from a guest on my podcast. Her name’s Rachel Greenwald. She’s an interesting person. She’s an academic and a matchmaker, really fascinating. And her advice was this: Be interested, not interesting. Many of us go into small talk thinking we have to be super interesting. We have to spike the ball over the net every time. When in fact small talk is more like playing the game of Hacky Sack, where it’s simply just set the other person up to be successful and get the ball back to you. So if we go in with that mindset, it makes it easier.

Now there’s some rules that we can follow. One rule is the one that you shared that in small talk there should be a balance of disclosure or depth of disclosure over time. So if you’re telling me about the first time your first pet died, and I’m telling you my favorite color is blue, there’s a discrepancy in disclosure there. Clearly you’ve revealed a lot more than I have. And we have this notion of reciprocity that if you share something that is appropriate but is more disclosive, that I should at some point match that level or come close. And if we don’t, then it feels very awkward and we feel like we’re not jiving in that way.

I don’t want everybody sitting with a little card that they’re checking off, but having that general notion in mind can help. And the trick here is not to be too disclosive too quickly. So if we start small talk and we’re talking about the I meeting that we’re at, and you immediately jump into the fight you had with your significant other that might lead to divorce, that’s a deep and big step that might feel a little inappropriate. But over time, if we continue to disclose, it might be perfectly natural for you to share that. So there’s sort of expectations and we just have to be mindful of those.

Another thing we need to be mindful of that I think is really important is this distinction between shifting and supporting responses. In a conversation, I can be supportive. That is, you might say, “Hey Matt, I just got back from Costa Rica.” I could say, “Oh great, did you spend time in San Jose? Did you get to any of the beaches?” Those are supporting responses. I’m asking you to keep telling me more. A shifting response would be like, “Oh, you went to Costa Rica. I went to Hawaii.” And the goal in a good conversation is to have more supporting responses than shifting, but to have some shifting responses. Because if all I do is continually support you, it looks like I don’t want to share. I’m not being disclosive at all. So there are these subtle things that we can be aware of to help the conversation go and to breed that intimacy and immediacy that we feel, but it takes a congruence, a balancing of doing that.

Lenny Rachitsky: This is awesome. I feel like everyone needs this class to just like, how do I talk to people? What’s the right way to talk?

Matt Abrahams: Well, right. The point that you’re bringing up there, Lenny, is we’re never taught this stuff and yet we have to do it all the time. And that’s why focusing on it I think really matters. And it can really, as you said, superpower, it can be a superpower because so many people don’t do this or spend the time getting better at it. We all operate under this notion of… the definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. And that’s not good for small talk and other communication situations.

Lenny Rachitsky: I love this balance you just shared of… So the primary piece of advice for small talk is be interested, not interesting, ask person questions, get excited about what they’re telling you. There’s a classic book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, which is very much about this. Highly recommend it. It’s like very old school now, but there’s so much good advice there. There’s no better sound to someone’s ears than their name. So just saying their name, they’re like, “Yeah, I love that.” And then just smiling. There’s all these very simple things that that book shares. It sounds like you recommend and you’re fan of that book, and it’s something you’ve read, right?

Matt Abrahams: I know the book. Some of that stuff has been true for a long time. Some of the stuff. I’m not a big fan of ingratiation and manipulation. I like authenticity and some of the advice in books like that can sound like smile, nod your head. And all of that can sound a little manipulative and inauthentic, but I think some of those principles are important. And if you can in an authentic, true, appropriate way, leverage some of that, I think it would help you.

Lenny Rachitsky: Yeah, somebody once shared a story with their kid… Then they’re 13. They read that book and it just effed them up for a while because they just started putting these into practice way too young.

Matt Abrahams: Well, one thing… I mean, all of a sudden you’re focusing on… You can get so wrapped up in doing these things that you’re actually not connecting. It’s like people who travel on a vacation and all they do is take pictures of where they are instead of experiencing where they are. And that’s not where we want to be with this advice.

Lenny Rachitsky: But I love this other component of… Because a lot of people hear this advice, ask questions, be interested, be excited, this version of it, but you need to have somewhat equal levels of disclosure is really important. Because I fall into this sometimes where like, “I don’t care about myself. I just want to ask you questions. And this is going great, I’m just going to keep asking.” And if you’re not sharing anything by yourself, it gets really strange. Even when they ask you, you’re like, “No, no, let’s keep talking about you.” You think they want that, but they don’t. They actually want to hear about you.

Matt Abrahams: Yeah, absolutely. And you do such a lovely job as a podcast… I mean, so podcast host is a great job for you if you like asking questions, but I bet you have found, because I have found this for me as being a host of Think Fast, Talk Smart is that sharing a little bit about your own experience actually makes the conversations go better. And so I think that’s a lesson for all of us, and you don’t have to have your own podcast to learn that lesson.

Lenny Rachitsky: Yeah, I read this book on podcasting interviewing when I first started, and one of the big piece of advice is if you share more about yourself, you’ll hear more stories that they can share. They’re more vulnerable. Not that I think about that, but that’s in my head sometimes.

Matt Abrahams: Yeah. Well, you do a good job of it, even if it’s just intuitive.

Lenny Rachitsky: Appreciate it.

Let’s talk about another version of on-the-spot talking, which is giving feedback. Oftentimes people listening to this podcast, they’re asked, what do you think of this design? What do you think of this roadmap? What do you think of the strategy? What are some tips for getting better at on-the-spot feedback?

Matt Abrahams: First and foremost, we need to look at and define feedback. Feedback to me is an opportunity to problem solve. Certainly there are some behaviors that we absolutely have to shut down. It’s inappropriate, it’s inexcusable, we have to shut it down. But often feedback is really an opportunity to problem solve. And if you take it as an opportunity to problem solve, then what you’re looking for is collaboration with the other person, which means that we have to invite them to join us as we do this. So it’s not me bestowing upon you my opinion, it’s me inviting you to together work on whatever this issue challenge is that we have. And I am a huge disciple of Kim Scott, Radical Candor. I really like her approach to it. Kim’s a friend. She’s actually a neighbor.

Lenny Rachitsky: Well, she’s been on the podcast, by the way.

Matt Abrahams: Oh, great. So you know Kim and your listeners know Kim. Yeah, she’s great. Where I think I can add a little value to what Kim talks about, and she does talk about structure, but I think having the structure to package up the information to make it easier to digest by your audience, the person or people you’re talking to, but also to formulate your thoughts can help. And we’ve already talked about one mechanism, one structure for feedback. It’s what, so what, now what?

So imagine, Lenny, you and I come out of a meeting and you say, “Hey, Matt, how’d that go?” I could say, “I thought the meeting went really well, Lenny, except when you talked about the implementation plan. You spoke a little quicker than you did with the other parts and you didn’t go into the same level of detail.” That’s my what. “When you speak quickly without a lot of detail, people might think you’re not as prepared or you’re really concerned about this part.” That’s the so what. “Next time I suggest you slow down and you include these two or three bits of data so that people see you really are knowledgeable on this area.” So that’s the now what.

So that what, so what, now what helps me very quickly structure information and package it in a way that helps me as the giver of the feedback, think through what are the things I need to say? I need to think through what’s bothering me, what the consequences are of that behavior, and then what I think you should do.

There’s a more robust structure I talk about in the book called The 4 Is, and each I stands for something starting with the letter I. But four eyes also like glasses. It helps you see more clearly. So in the 4 I structure, the first I is information. You’re just setting the playing field so the person knows what you’re giving the feedback about. The second is impact, and this is impact on you, the feedback giver. The third is the invitation that you make, and then the final is the implications or consequences.

So imagine I have an employee who doesn’t show up to the meetings on time and prepared. I might say, “This is the third time that you have showed up late to this meeting. I feel you’re not prioritizing this meeting the same way others of us are. What can we do to help make sure you show up prepared for the next meeting? Because if you do, we’re going to finish the project on time and get a new cool project.” So information, impact, invitation, and implications. Now, certainly I can vary the tone and the directness of some of those responses so it sounds very differently, but thinking through it in my mind, I have to level set what we’re talking about. I have to share why it’s important to me at least, make the invitation, and talk about the benefits or consequences. Makes a lot of sense. So there are lots of structures and lots of ways to communicate, especially in feedback. Find one or two that work for you so when you’re put on the spot, you can default to it.

Lenny Rachitsky: Maybe a big takeaway here is pick one of these structures that you want to use when somebody asks you for feedback. And the two you shared are what? So what? Now what? Or these four Is. Give information, show the impact that it had on you, invitation and then implications.

Matt Abrahams: That’s correct, yeah.

Lenny Rachitsky: Okay. Let’s talk about another category, which is not a work category, but I suck at toasts and I am always trying to get better at this. And you have a bunch of awesome advice for how to give better toasts. Can you share some stuff?

Matt Abrahams: Yeah. We have all been victimized by bad toasts. The toast that goes on too long, the toast that’s more about the person giving the toast than the event or the person. And when I say toast, I don’t just mean at weddings, bar mitzvahs, quinceaneras. We give tributes at work all the time. Congratulations to the team or somebody’s anniversary or somebody’s retirement. So we give toasts and tributes all the time. In fact, I heard a statistic once that it is the most frequent public speaking event across people is giving toasts and tributes. So we should learn how to do these well.

So I have an acronym. It works. It’s called WHAT. W-H-A-T. The W stands for why are we here? Now, if I’m at a wedding, I don’t have to tell the audience why we’re here. We get it. But if we’re doing an all hands and I’m called up to speak, it might be in my best interest to share with everybody, I’m here to celebrate the release of this product that that team put out. So you might have to say, why are we here?

The H is how are you connected to the event? So if I’m at a wedding, people might not know who I am. I could say, “Hey, I’ve known the groom for 25 years.” And people are like, “Oh, okay. Now that makes sense.” If you’re giving a tribute at work, you don’t have to say, “And I’m the boss.” Everybody knows your position. So again, these are choices you make. So why are we here? How are you connected?

The A stands for anecdote. Tell a story or a quick example that is relevant and accessible to everybody. There’s no insider knowledge and keep it concise.

And then ultimately the last part is the gratitude, the thank you. So express gratitude, express some kind of thanks. In a toast at a celebratory event, you might say cheers or whatever’s appropriate for the culture you come from to signal closure. But again, why are we here? How are you connected? Anecdote or two, and then the gratitude or thanking at the end. And if you follow that structure, it can navigate, just like a GPS, your way through the toast.

Lenny Rachitsky: This is such an easy structure to remember. There’s so much of it that I love. What I want to understand is where do you put the actual content of the tribute and the toast? Is it the anecdote expands into, “Here’s what I want to say?” Like there’s an example or story and then it’s like-

Matt Abrahams: Exactly. So it is typically part of that. You might do it as part of the why we’re all here. “We’re here to really celebrate the Herculean effort of this particular team to get this product launched. I’m so honored to have supported it. I’m the manager of the team. Here’s a story about how Lenny worked overtime to get this done. Let’s raise our glasses and give them a salute.” So yes, you could do it in the why are we here or through the anecdotes.

Lenny Rachitsky: Okay. And then one of your other piece of advice, which connects to what you just said is be brief.

Matt Abrahams: Yes, yes. So nobody has ever complained about a toast that’s too brief. I’m sure it’s possible, but the majority of complaints are the toast went on forever.

Lenny Rachitsky: Do you find that it would ever make sense to give a couple anecdotes or make a couple points in a toast?

Matt Abrahams: Yeah, and it depends. Toasts are opportunities for teaching and learning as well, especially in a work environment. So it might make sense to tell a couple anecdotes. I’m a huge fan… I mean, your listeners know, you know minimally viable product design, agile development, really critical. What is it about? It’s about understanding your audience, your users, and it’s about rapidly prototyping and iterating. I believe in minimally viable communication, trademark pending, where it’s the same principles. Know your audience, put together a rough draft of what you want to say, test it out. So if you’re going to give a big toast in front of a company all hands, run it by a few people and say, “Is it too many anecdotes? Would it benefit from having another story?” Get people’s feedback. We are not the best judges of our communication. So the answer is yes, but test it out.

Lenny Rachitsky: Another element of a great toast that you recommend is to be emotional. Can you touch on that?

Matt Abrahams: Well, so emotion connects with people, and as long as it’s genuine and authentic, it’s really important. I’ve been thinking a lot about emotion and communication. My father recently passed away and everybody in my family said, “Well, Matt’s going to do the eulogy.” It was like, I had no choice. What do I do? I’m the guy who teaches communication. So I felt added pressure not only to honor my father’s life, but everybody’s like, “This is the way you do a eulogy.” And so I wanted to do some research on what’s all the advice out there on eulogies, and there wasn’t a lot. So I actually wrote an article on my experience, and hopefully it’ll help people. But the point is, in those circumstances where there’s a lot of emotion, it’s important because it connects to the audience, it makes it human, but sometimes the emotion can get in the way for you as a communicator. I mean, I was very concerned that my emotion would cover up or overshadow the honoring I was trying to do of my father. But the same thing can happen in any kind of toast situation.

So think about emotion. Emotion is a tool to use. The best way to convey emotion in a toast is through the anecdotes you use. The anecdotes reveal the emotion. It’s one thing to say, “I am so sad.” It’s another thing to tell a story that is sad.

I was very fortunate to interview for my podcast coming up soon, a one-panel cartoonist. So she has to create everything in one panel. And her advice is: Don’t tell, show. In that don’t tell somebody you’re angry, show that you’re angry in the panel she writes. So showing the emotion through story and anecdote is the way to do it.

Lenny Rachitsky: Have you had Matthew Dix on your podcast?

Matt Abrahams: So it is so funny. I have not, and I want to. His name comes up more than anybody else’s. And I know of his work and his advice, so I might ask you to connect me.

Lenny Rachitsky: Absolutely. I thought of him as you were talking because he helps people create their eulogy ahead of time before somebody passes away, before you get really emotional and you have to rush it. So that’s one of his services is he helps to write eulogies for people.

Matt Abrahams: Yeah, yeah. No, I’d love an introduction. His work is very influential.

Lenny Rachitsky: Absolutely. He’s amazing. We’ll link his episode about storytelling.

Okay, let me talk about a couple more. Q&A, getting better at question, answer at the end of a talk, whether it’s on the spot or not.

Matt Abrahams: Again, I always start with approach. Many of us see Q&A as threatening or challenging, and in fact, we need to see Q&A as an opportunity. It’s an opportunity to extend, expand, connect, learn. Even in the most hostile of situations where people are really coming at you with a lot of spice or hot and heavy, you can get a lot of value out of it. So we have to come to the approaches. These questions are opportunities. We have to make sure that we take the question in without interrupting or over-validating the question.

I have two pet peeves about Q&A sessions. One is saying good question to every question. And two, at the end of answering the question saying, “Does that make sense?” Because in both cases, you’re trying to validate the asker when you say good question. You’re also trying to buy yourself time. And there are other ways to do that. And at the end when you say, “Does that make sense,” you’ve got a laudable goal in mind, which is, “Did I answer your question?” But I’d much rather you say, “Did I answer your question? Can I tell you more? Do you have a follow-up question?"" Because if you keep saying, “does that make sense, does that make sense,” people are going to start thinking, “Maybe he doesn’t make sense because he is always asking.” So some pet peeves there.

Once the question comes in and you have to answer it, I have yet another structure. This structure is related to the what, so what, now what structure. It’s called ADD for adding value. You answer the question cleanly and concisely. You then give an example to reinforce the answer, and then you explain the relevance or significance of the answer so people know it. Would you mind role-playing an example of this with me, Lenny?

Lenny Rachitsky: Absolutely.

Matt Abrahams: Okay. Imagine you’re hiring me. You’re a hiring manager, and I’m interviewing to be what I do for my day job. I’m a lecturer at Stanford’s Business School, teach strategic communication. You so happen to have a position open for a strategic communication lecturer. I show up. What is a reasonable question you would ask that doesn’t just have a yes no answer?

Lenny Rachitsky: Wait, so you’re interviewing for a role to be a lecturer in my school and [inaudible 01:05:11] communication.

Matt Abrahams: Yes. You’re the dean. You get to hire me. What’s a reasonable question? I mean, you could ask a super hard one, but I want people to hear how ADD works.

Lenny Rachitsky: This might be too simple, but just how many students have you worked with and taught over the years?

Matt Abrahams: Okay, so I’m going to morph that question because I could just say thousands, which is true, but I’m going to turn it into a question about experience, because really what you’re asking me is what’s my experience? So because that I can give an ADD answer too. If it’s just a numeric answer, just give a number. So I might say, “I’ve been doing this for 25 years and I have taught over thousands of students. I’ve taught both in the academic world, but also in the corporate world. What this means is I can tailor my material to be relevant and useful to your students.”

So I answered the question. The question was, what’s your experience? 25 years, thousands of students. I then give an example. I’ve done this in the corporate world, I’ve done this in the academic world. So I ground it in something tangible. And then I show the relevance. What this means for you as a dean hiring me, is that I’m going to be able to tailor my experience. We often assume that people can connect the dots. If I give my answer, you’re going to see, “Oh, that’s why this is relevant and important.” But we need to actually connect those dots for our audience.

I had a psychology professor once who said, the funny thing about common sense is it’s not so common, and we often make the assumption that people will connect the dots. So answer the question, give a detailed example, and then explain the relevance. And if you do that, it will help. And I challenge every one of your listeners working in companies that have FAQs, frequently asked questions, go back to those FAQs and put them in this structure. Not only will it help you digest and get familiar and comfortable with the structure, anybody looking at those answers begins to see that this is a way to give a complete answer. This is how our organization answers questions. And that can be so helpful to building consistency and helping yourself answer better.

Lenny Rachitsky: Just to clarify, the acronym is ADD?

Matt Abrahams: ADD. Answer, detailed example, describe the relevance.

Lenny Rachitsky: Describe the relevance. I see how you snuck that D in there.

Matt Abrahams: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you can come up with whatever acronym you want that helps you remember. ADD because it adds value.

Lenny Rachitsky: Awesome. Okay. And maybe one last quick one, apologizing. What’s a couple tips for getting better at apologizing on the spot?

Matt Abrahams: First and foremost, we need to take the time to apologize. Many of us don’t. And when we apologize, we need to make sure that we apologize for the transgression and not for how we made people feel. So often people will simply say, “I’m sorry that you feel bad.” Well, that’s not an apology. You’re not assuming responsibility. So we need to first start by talking about the issue that we are addressing or the problem that we caused somebody. So we need to think about apologies in that way. So an apology to me, I have a AAA, like roadside repair service here in the United States, AAA. It’s three steps, acknowledge, appreciate, and amends. So I have to acknowledge what I did.

So imagine we’re in a meeting and I interrupted you. You were in the midst of speaking and I interrupted you. So I might say, “I’m very sorry for interrupting what you were saying. I over-spoke when you were talking.” I’m acknowledging what I did.

Then I appreciate. “I can imagine my doing that made you feel bad and you feel that you didn’t get your fair share of sharing your point of view.” So that’s the appreciation.

The amends part is, “I will work not to do this. In fact, I will wait till you’re done, and I will actually paraphrase what you said before I contribute my point.” So I’m signaling I understand it, and here’s the very specific thing I’m going to do to try to remedy it, which of course you can comment on. You can say, no, I don’t think that’s enough. I think you whatever, or thank you, I think that’s even more than is needed, whatever. So you acknowledge the actual behavior and offense, not how you made the person feel right away. You then express appreciation for the difficulty you might’ve caused, and then you make amends. And the AAA approach, I think can really be helpful to people to be better at in-the-moment apologies.

Lenny Rachitsky: Amazing. Matt, I think we’ve packed this episode with so many tactical golden nuggets to help people become better communicators, especially on the spot. Is there anything else you want to share or leave listeners with before I ask you how they can find you online and things like that?

Matt Abrahams: Again, I want to go back to how we started the second part about spontaneous speaking. Everybody can get better at communication. And I encourage, I challenge people to take the steps that they need to take to do it. So it starts with initiative. It’s followed by grace and a lot of compassion, it takes time. But in so doing, you can improve your communication and help others. It’s not just about you finding your voice, it’s about you sharing that voice with others. So taking the time to work on your communication is critically important, and I encourage everybody to do so.

Lenny Rachitsky: All right. I’m hoping people will follow that advice. And if not, think back to what we talked about at the beginning of just how much impact these have and how many people are also going through the same challenges you’re probably feeling speaking and being on the spot. All right, where can folks find your podcast, your book, and also how can listeners be useful to you?

Matt Abrahams: Oh, I love that last question. So mattabrahams.com, great place to go to to find things. So at mattabrahams.com you’ll find a whole bunch of resources. My own and others. I’ve curated a bunch of resources. You can find Think Fast, Talk Smart wherever you get podcasts and on YouTube. And then the book Think Faster, Talk Smarter is available everywhere. I’m a huge user of LinkedIn. And to answer that last question you asked, I invite people to connect on LinkedIn. I’d love to hear their stories and find ways to collaborate.

Lenny Rachitsky: Awesome. And your podcast is ranked higher than this podcast. You’re in a different category, which is a very competitive category. The business category. I’ve moved myself to the technology category, which feels more natural to me, but your podcast is killing it, so congrats.

Matt Abrahams: Thank you.

Lenny Rachitsky: Thank you for sharing your wisdom with us. That’s it. Matt, thank you again for being here.

Matt Abrahams: Great pleasure to have the conversation with you, Lenny. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Lenny Rachitsky: Same. Bye everyone.

Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lennyspodcast.com. See you in the next episode.

Glossary

English	中文
Alison Wood Brooks	Alison Wood Brooks
bar mitzvah	受戒礼
box breathing	箱式呼吸
cognitive bandwidth	认知带宽
cognitive reframing	认知重塑
dare to be dull	敢于平庸
desensitization	脱敏
dress rehearsal	彩排
embodied cognition	具身认知（embodied cognition）
Huberman	Huberman
improvisation	即兴表演
Johnny Miller	Johnny Miller
Julia Cameron	Julia Cameron
Kim Scott	Kim Scott
Lenny Rachitsky	Lenny Rachitsky
mantra	箴言
Matt Abrahams	Matt Abrahams
Matthew Dix	Matthew Dix
minimally viable communication	最小可行性沟通
PREP	PREP 结构
Q&A	问答（Q&A）
quinceañera	成人礼
Rachel Greenwald	Rachel Greenwald
Radical Candor	彻底坦率（Radical Candor）
sense of agency	掌控感
Speaking Up Without Freaking Out	《开口说话不抓狂》（Speaking Up Without Freaking Out）
spontaneous speaking	即兴演讲
table topics	即兴问答（table topics）
The 4 Is	4个I结构（The 4 Is）
The Artist’s Way	《艺术家之道》
Think Fast, Talk Smart	《快速思考，聪明说话》（Think Fast, Talk Smart）
Think Faster and Talk Smarter	《思考更快，说话更聪明》（Think Faster and Talk Smarter）
Toastmasters	头马俱乐部（Toastmasters）
visualization	可视化
what, so what, now what	是什么、那又怎样、接下来怎样（what, so what, now what）

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Reformatted by reformat_english.py