Think Faster, Talk Smarter with Matt Abrahams

Raise your hand if you've recently had to introduce yourself or make small

talk

. Yes, that's what today is about, how to speak better in the moment. My hunch is that many of you introducing yourself and making small

talk

at times was challenging, it's awkward. It can be uncomfortable, so today I want to talk about how we can

think

faster

and speak

smarter

in those moments when we are forced to

think

and act quickly. We all know that speaking in planned situations, presentations, proposals, meetings with agendas can be difficult, but it can be much more difficult to speak in the moment and if you think about it, most of our communication happens in the moment, it is things like doing a toast, answering questions, giving feedback, introducing yourself, answering questions, these are the things that can be very challenging for So today I would like to explain to you a methodology that I developed in service of the needs of our students here at Stanford.

Many years ago, the deans came to me and told me we had a problem. The problem is our very bright Stanford MBA students. They are struggling to answer those cold questions from their professors, remember here when people would say what do you think and you had to answer, so I dove deep into research in Psychology, Anthropology, Sociology, Improv, Neuroscience and came up with a methodology Now that All Stanford MBAs within the first three weeks of being here have the opportunity to take advantage and it turns out that it helps them feel more comfortable and confident not only answering questions but also standing up in class and giving a position and many other situations they encounter. themselves when they leave here interviewing for jobs giving feedback to employees etc. so today you will not only listen to me, but it will be participatory and we will start, it is not difficult, some of you will look at each other and say oh.

No, what are you going to make me do? It's pretty simple. I would like everyone to read this prayer and what is more important to me is the meaning of the prayer. I would like you to count the number of FS, the letter F, how many? FS Do you find? I'll give you three or four seconds to do it. Keep the response silent. How many FS? I wish my MBA students were as quiet and thoughtful as you are now. Alright. Raise your hand if you found it. three FS how many found three excellent very good anyone found four ah someone found five how about six there are six FS what two letter word ends in f many of us got lost so why do I do this activity?

I have done this in all the workshops. every keynote speech I give why because this is an exact analogy of what we are going to do here today many of us miss little things that make a big difference in our communication now the other reason I do this is 14 years ago When I first saw this, I found three. I felt really stupid and I like to get past that. So let's identify little things that make a big difference in making us more effective in our spontaneous speech, so I want to present to you a six. Methodology of steps we can use to improve speaking in the moment and the six steps are divided into two categories: mindset and messages.

The first step has to do with controlling anxiety. Tame anxiety. Beast. Most people get nervous when speaking in spontaneous situations. In fact, the majority. People get nervous about speaking in any high-risk situation. We have some research that says over 85% of people feel nervous in high-stakes situations and I think the other 15% are lying, so let me ask you: how do you feel when you watch a movie? nervous speaker present now I know some of you probably like to see people suffer, but most of us don't, how do you just feel left out? how do you feel when you see a nervous speaker present, okay, so awkward, empathetic and I heard some?

People say I feel anxious myself. I call that secondhand anxiety, so if for no other reason, we must learn to manage our anxiety so that our audience can focus on us and not get distracted, so when it comes to managing anxiety, we have to take two measurements. In a broad approach we have to control both the symptoms and the sources. Symptoms are the things we experience physiologically, what happens in our body, and sources are the things that initiate or exacerbate that anxiety. So I'd like to hear from some of you. What happens to you when you get nervous?

When they put them in trouble. I will start. I blush and sweat. What's wrong with some of you? wet it dries so you sweat Palms but dry mouth very strange right, what else happens? My brain gets yes, you freeze, you don't remember what to say, what else is going on, please, heart, yes, you feel your heart pounding, right, some of us get shaky, these are normal, natural responses to Anxiety: Your body considers speaking in the moment to be under threat and invokes the ORF fight-flight response and these are normal, natural responses, but there are things we can do to address them.

Now let me share some with For you, the first and best thing you can probably do is breathe deeply into your belly, the kind of breathing you would do if you had ever done yoga, taii or chiong, and the interesting thing is that the exhale is more important . than the inhale, so my rule of thumb or should I say my lung rule is that you want your exhale to be twice as long as your inhale and if you take two or three of these deep belly breaths, it will actually lower your heart rate. fast. rapid breathing that makes you talk

faster

and you will feel calmer, so before you enter a room where you think you will be asked for feedback or you know they will ask you questions or before you unmute yourself on Zoom, take a deep breath and it will help you now If you have a dry mouth and you know you're going to find yourself in a situation where you might have to speak on the spot, drink some warm water, suck on a Loz, or chew gum, you obviously don't want to do it while you're in the middle of speaking. but that will help reactivate those salivary glands if you are like me and you blush and sweat hold something cold in the palms of your hand the palms of your hand are Thermoregulators of your body just like your forehead or the back of your neck if any Maybe you have had a fever and you put a cold compress on your head to cool off because your heart rate increases because your body tenses up when you are stressed you have more blood circulating tighter tubes your blood pressure goes up and that makes you feel hotter it is as if Were you exercising so we can reduce sweating and blushing by cooling down?

In fact, before I started talking to Ed today, I was holding a bottle of cold water for help. These are some of the things we can do to manage our anxiety symptoms. . If I didn't talk about a symptom you have, there are resources that I will share at the end of the talk that can help you find ways to manage your anxiety. anxiety now there is also another side we have to think about the sources the sources are the things that initiate or exacerbate our anxiety there are many, let me talk about one, many of us are nervous about the goal of what we are trying to achieve when we communicate my students want to get a good grade the entrepreneurs I train want to get funding you may want to get a new job or you may want them to support your project, so what makes you nervous is the fact that you may not achieve that objective in others In words, what makes you nervous is a possible negative outcome in the future, so how do we become very present-oriented?

Because if you're in the moment, by definition, you're not worried about the future, so how can we orient ourselves to the present in a way? It's doing something physical walking around the building before going to that job interview another way is listening to a song or a playlist like athletes do, you can do what I do. I orient myself to the present by talking to people before getting up. here on stage I was talking to many of you, that helps me orient myself in the present. I can't engage in a conversation and think about what could go wrong in my presentation or Q&A session.

Start at 100 and count backwards by 17. you are present oriented I know I am in front of a crowd that is trying the first thing is easy 83 the next is difficult my favorite way to be present oriented is to say tongue twisters you can't say a tongue twisters well and not being in the present moment some of you are saying uhoh, that's right, I'm going to ask you to say my favorite tongue twister. I said this tongue twister just before I left here, it warms me up and orients me to the present, many of us assume that we can go from Silence to Brightness without warming up our voices, but you know, if you have ever played a sport, exercised or played an instrument musical, you need to warm up first, so let's try it.

My favorite tongue twister takes 5 seconds to say. He has three. sentences and if you say one of the sentences wrong you will say a naughty word so I'm listening here okay let's try it repeat after me I cut a sheet SL she a sheet I cut one she cut and on that cut sheet I feel excellent, no one said that word naughty and I'm sure everyone knows what it is. By managing our anxiety, both the symptoms and the sources, we prepare ourselves to be better when we speak in the moment. The second step of our process has to do with maximizing mediocrity, we do it our way.

I have the audacity in front of my Stanford MBA students on the first day of class to say maximize mediocrity, they are speechless, they have never been told to be mediocre, but why do I recommend this? For this we are the biggest impediment to our ability to speak spontaneously the moment we get in our way and we do so through all the judgment and evaluation we make of the material we are thinking of saying that we have in our head. Here's why this is problematic. Think of your brain as a computer. This is not a perfect analogy, but at this point it works.

You know, on your laptops or on your phones, when you have many applications and windows open, how the performance of each of them works. is a little less good because the others are open, that's because the bandwidth is less. The same thing happens with your brain when I evaluate and judge everything I say as I say it. I have less cognitive bandwidth to focus on what I'm actually saying when we evaluate ourselves as we speak, we are doing ourselves a disservice. Be very clear. I'm not saying you should never judge or evaluate the way you speak, you should, but we can turn the volume down a bit. to give us more resources so that we can be more present and more effective in what we say, so the true prayer that I say to my students at the end I start with maximize mediocrity and then I end the class by saying maximize mediocrity so that you can achieve greatness if you give yourself permission just to answer the question, just to give feedback, just to have a little chat, then you put yourself in a position to do very well, but when I say to myself, I have to give the right answer. best comments I need to be the most interesting in small talk, this reduces the probability that you will do them well, so the first step is to control anxiety, the second step is to lower the volume of that observation and mental evaluation that we are doing and that will help you. puts you in a position to be more present and more engaged, the third step of the methodology has to do with the fact that many of us see speaking in the moment and in general as a threat and a challenge if I were to say to any of you at the At the end of the meeting you are hosting you will get some questions from your audience, many of you don't say oh that's great, I can't wait, you say oh no, I'd better do a good job, I'm afraid so.

I'm going to see that what I said is wrong, they're going to challenge me. Many of us see these situations as threatening and challenging, and when we do, it impacts not only what we say but how we say it, we tend to withdraw, we make ourselves small. our answers are Curt, our tone is Hard because we feel like we have to advocate that there is another way to approach this and before I share it with you that way and give you some tools, I want you to really have an experience with it, so I'm going to tell you I ask you to play with me a very simple improvisation game, it is called giving a gift.

Everyone in our lives has had the experience of giving a gift and receiving a gift, so you already know how to play this game, but let's practice. I would like everyone to take out an imaginary box. Could you do this with me? Please, here is your imaginary box on the count of three. I would like you to practice giving it and then give it to give the gift. Just extend your arms. Everyone ready. 1 2 3 give him a perfect gift very good now when you receive a gift you do it backwards ready 1 two three you have received a giftperfect so this is what we're going to do in a moment I'm going to ask you to find someone sitting near you, they'll just introduce themselves if you don't know and play the game of giving a gift.

One of you will give a gift to her partner. Your partner will take the opened imaginary gift. the box look inside look at your partner and say thank you for and you are going to say the first thing that comes to mind so you can say thank you for the car thank you for the pen thank you for the plane no You don't even have to put your partner in the box who He gave you the imaginary gift. When you listen to it, he will explain why he gave it to you. Do you see how there are two acts of spontaneity that happen in this activity and then you? they will change like this again when it's your turn to give you give them the gift your partner receives the gift they open the box they look inside and thank them the first thing that comes to mind raising your hand how many of you already know what's in your box ?

Ah, more than half of you raised your hands. Yes, remember what I said in the previous step. How we want to do it right and we want to do it. We're sure we're right, so you're fine. I know there will be a dog bone in my box. That's perfect. I've finished now. I want you to literally say the first thing that comes to mind when you open the box. to tell my MBA students to keep it clean and legal. I'm sure I don't have to tell you that here, but I want you to name it and then your partner, upon hearing it, will immediately explain it to you and then you.

I'm going to change this activity it should take 2 minutes. I'll ask you to come back in about two minutes, so find someone sitting next to you. Present yourself. The person who woke up the earliest this morning goes first. I learned a long time ago as a teacher. you don't say who goes first, everyone argues about it, okay, find a person, thank you for doing this activity, I saw a lot of smiles, it looks like you were having fun, I'm just going to move my arm through the audience and while my hand points at your general direction, could you just say what you found in your box?

I just love hearing what people gave each other, just start shouting what you gave yourselves, Kleenex tires, okay, catnip, I heard, yeah, pumpkin notes, I heard broccoli, oh. yes, dog poop, okay, yes, great sweater, you guys gave each other wonderful gifts. It's also a kind of shelf test. He tells us a little about you, but we won't go there. Let me ask you this, how did you feel when you gave the gift? and they were waiting to hear what you gave a lot of you seemed excited I see a lot of you SM what did I say what did I say and then you all embraced a rule that comes from improvisation I'm a big fan of improv and I have I had wonderful improv teachers here in this campus Patricia Ryan Madson Adam Tobin Dan kleene these are improv experts who taught me the value of improv and you all just executed the number one rule of improv, yeah, and they didn't say no.

I'll give you a dog bone No, you said of course you did and here's why, right, you accepted it right away. What if, when someone asked you a question or asked for feedback, you saw it as an opportunity, just like you saw this activity as an opportunity now. I'm not naive. I know that sometimes when people ask us questions or ask for feedback they are really putting us on the spot, they want to challenge us, they come after us, but even in those moments I can see it. as an opportunity to connect to learn to find some common ground can change change everything I will intervene I will be bigger in my response my tone will be more collaborative my responses will be more detailed by seeing spontaneous communication as an opportunity like The gift is not a threat, it changes our entire approach, so how do we do this?

How do we execute that in the new book I wrote by thinking faster by talking more? I present several tools that we can use to see things as opportunities. The first one comes from this notion of The growth mindset that Carol D on this campus helped develop and champions is wonderful and her work is fantastic. An area of ​​her work is growth mindset that essentially says that when we face a challenge, it doesn't necessarily turn out the way we want. we can learn and grow and start to get better at it versus a fixed mindset that says this is how we're built, this is how it is, a growth mindset again opens up to opportunity and one aspect of it that I really resonate with is this notion. that not yet just because something didn't go the way you wanted doesn't mean it will never go the way you want it just means you haven't yet maybe you don't have the skills you don't have the practice but it means that you can get there, so adopting a mindset that we haven't yet.

It helps to see things as opportunities, opportunities to learn, opportunities to grow, so when you encounter frustration in your life, especially around communication, tell yourself not yet, we're there. We talk about yes and yes and that's where we see the possibility of connection, so even if you don't agree in a negotiation that's happening right now, you can look for those common areas, where we agree, where the yes is and where it comes from the third one comes from the basketball world, many of you are familiar with Mike Shashi, former basketball coach, Coach K, one of the things he is credited with instilling in his players, but throughout the sport it is This notion of the next play if you are an athlete, let's say a basketball player and you miss a shot instead of reflecting and getting frustrated with yourself, you move on to the next play because the reality is that if I miss my shot and I sit there thinking about what bad it was, how I should have done it.

I made it, the play is already in progress and the other team could be scoring a shot. I have to move on to the next play and the same thing happens when you're in the middle of a conversation. Small talk feedback situation if something happens that doesn't work. exactly the way you want the next play to be, keep moving now while the reflection in the moment is a bad reflection after the fact is very good, so I would love for you at that moment to move on to the next play, but later that day reflect on what worked and Why don't many of us treat our communication as that definition of insanity?

You know, doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. If you don't reflect, learn and think about it, you won't change. next moment game later in the day reflection and then the end of these steps makes us rethink the way we think about mistakes many of us try to avoid mistakes we feel like a mistake is a bad thing now if you think about it we learn through of mistakes yes You watch children as they develop, they make a lot of mistakes and that's how they learn. We can benefit from that too, but we have to look at them differently instead of the mistakes.

I would like you to consider them as missed takes. Film and television directors will have their actors do multiple takes of the same scene. Have you seen that clipboard that says take one, take two, no scene is wrong, they're just trying to optimize and try different things, so when you do something that doesn't go the way you want, think to yourself, take two. I'll just do it again differently, it wasn't bad, it wasn't bad, I'll just try it differently and if you take that approach in your actions. and the things that don't go your way, they keep you in a much more positive frame of reference and encourage you to think and learn, learn from what just happened, so these four tools not yet, yeah, next play and the missed shots. are the ways we can see our communication in the moment as opportunities and not threats, so we get out of our own way after managing anxiety, we see things as opportunities, not threats, and then our fourth step has to see with listen more. most of us are not good listeners, we listen enough to get the gist of what someone is saying and then we start thinking, judging, evaluating, rehearsing what we want to say, we don't listen deeply and if you don't listen deeply when you are communicating in moment you can make some mistakes imagine this, we walk out of a meeting together you turn to me and tell me how you think it went I listen to feedback and start listing all the things we did wrong, all the things you could have done better how can we make sure Don't make the same mistakes next time, but if I had really listened at that moment, I might have noticed that you came out the back door, not the front door, you were looking down and speaking in a lower voice than you normally do at that time. what you wanted was not feedback but support and by virtue of giving you all this constructive feedback, I actually did you no favors and could have damaged the relationship we have, so we need to listen in a very different way. when we have to speak spontaneously so that we really understand what is needed in the moment, so I would like to give you some tips on how to listen better and I must warn that my wife gets very upset when I teach her to listen because she says I'm still a work in progress , so listen to what I say, not necessarily what I do first.

When you are listening, you must listen carefully. I heard a professor at another university say that he was him, he taught music and he was talking. about jazz and he had a jazz teacher and I had to look up this guy to find out his name, but he said we have to listen until we sweat and I love that approach. Listening is hard work, so the first thing we need to do is when. someone is speaking, we have to listen to what is the essence of what they are saying, what is the crux of what they are trying to convey and then secondly, we have to employ a strategy that I learned from a colleague here, his name is Collins dobs. and Collins teaches critical and crucial conversations here at the business school and he has a methodology to help you do that and that methodology applies wonderfully to listening are three things Pace space Grace to listen well you have to give yourself a little bit of each of those that I have to slow things down the world moves very fast we have a lot of things to do if I slow down I can hear better so the first step is to slow things down second you have to give yourself space sometimes it is physical space move to a location where you can really hear better as I get older everything is louder in the ambient sound move to a place where you can really hear but also mental space give yourself permission to be oriented to the present right now listening to this person and then finally grace and grace is giving yourself permission to lend pay attention to what is happening in the environment, how the person says what they say, not just what they say, and Gracia refers to listening to your own intuition.

We have heard many things, we have seen many things in our lives and we receive intuitions that come to us based on what we hear and we respect them. We often think that listening is just what comes in, but you can also hear what's going on inside you, but with a little rhythm, space and Grace and Focusing on the crux of what someone is saying, you can listen better. One of the best tools we can use to listen better is to ask clarifying questions or paraphrase. We have the notion that we have to respond in the immediate moment if not.

I don't respond right away, it means I'm not sure, it means I don't know what I'm doing, and yet we can pause to reflect on what we're hearing before we respond, so I can literally pause. Many of us feel that taking a break is bad, but taking a break can be great. I can ask a clarifying question that gives me a little time or I can paraphrase, that's where I take something that you've said, synthesize it and present it to you in a way that's distilled, so it's not like what a child does. 5 years just parroting what you say, that's annoying, but you look for the key idea and repeat it by asking follow-up questions and paraphrasing, these are lower. sort cognitive skills in other words, I can be thinking about what I want to say next while I'm doing them, so we're going to do a paraphrasing activity, it's very quick, very similar to what we did with giving a gift.

In a moment. I'm going to ask you to find a different partner in the room and I'm going to ask you to share a story of your name and it can be anything related to your name that you want, it can be very deep and meaningful. be funny for 30 seconds you are going to tell a story about your name this activity is not about telling stories this activity is about paraphrasing because the person you are telling it to is going to paraphrase what you said and then they will say ask a question because paraphrasing never happens on its own it's always followed by something maybe your answer maybe it connects to the agenda maybe asking a question so let me give you an example of what this is like so I'll tell you a story about my name during 30 seconds I'm going to ask for a volunteer if you want to paraphrase what I said and then another volunteer to ask a question now you don't need to answer the question but training yourself to ask a question ofImmediately after paraphrasing, you're training yourself to keep the conversation moving.

Paraphrasing is never something you do for its own sake, you always use it to move forward, so here's a story about my name, my name is Matt, throughout my childhood, I was teased mercilessly because Matt rhymes with everything is okay. lazy as a doormat dumb as a cat you're fat I was made fun of all the time when my wife and I started our family it was very important to me that our children not be given names that were easily mocked as teachers I have a built-in focus group, so So I walked into my classroom, wrote down the three names that my wife and I were willing to call our children, and gave my students five minutes to come up with the most outrageous, meanest rhymes and everything we could and we named my children. sons the names that had the shortest lists, so that's the story of my name.

Is there anyone here willing to paraphrase my story again? A paraphrase gets to the crux of the

matt

er. I see his hand here, sir, yes. wouldn't it happen excellent great paraphrase essentially what he said for those of you who couldn't listen is that they did a stress test with their children's names right that's a great paraphrase what is a reasonable question you could ask yes what are the children's names? I'm not going to tell you because they would get very angry, but I will tell you that my children are not made fun of for their names, now they are made fun of for many other things, but not for their names.

See how he can paraphrase? I'm actually going to help you listen more carefully, so this is what I'm going to ask you to do: find someone else sitting around you, introduce yourself and the person in your association who had to travel the furthest to get there. to campus for the event, not this morning, yes You are not local, you are staying in a nearby hotel but where you come from. Whoever has traveled the furthest will go first. You will tell a 30-second story about your name. Your partner will immediately paraphrase and ask a question. There is no need for him to answer it and then it will change.

This should take us two minutes. Find a partner. Tell a story about his name. How did it feel to have your story paraphrased? It feels good. Does it feel good to have your story paraphrased? It feels good to be heard now that we're not virtual in this room, so we don't have some of those cool features that you have in tools like Zoom and Teams and we meet, so we'll do it all the old fashioned way. Will everyone take out the fist like that? This is a yes, thumbs up, yes, thumbs down, no, middle finger, did your partner paraphrase your name story correctly?

I'm almost exclusively seeing thumbs up, I see. one sideways and we may have a thumbs down, but there's always one on every credit. No, how did it feel? How did it feel to hear paraphrasing? How did it feel to do this? Difficult, right. I see the thumbs up, but it was difficult. listen in a different way when I looked at all of you doing this you were leaning you were nodding I could tell that you were listening with intensity we have the ability to listen well but we have to encourage ourselves to do it and when we speak spontaneously it is essential to listen well, so we have already completed the first four steps of process. manage anxiety. get out of our own way. see it as an opportunity. listen carefully.

This all has to do with a mindset that we haven't really responded to. For the moment yet, so that's the next part and that's messaging and messaging has two components first, it's about structure, structure is critical, how messages are put together

matt

ers, most of us just ramble. and we give lists of information when we are put on the spot and your brain is not programmed for lists, it is very difficult for us to remember just ramblings, our brains are actually programmed to structure a story, a story, to me, a structural structure does not It is more than a logical connection of ideas that has a beginning, a middle and an end.

I learned the power of story and the power of structure. When I was a student here at Stanford many, many years ago I was a tour guide on this campus until the day of today. I can still walk backwards in a straight line while talking, they trained us. back then, for 12 weeks, the most important thing they taught us, they said that above all, to be a good tour guide on this campus, you should never lose your tour group, you are a bad tour guide if you make people get lost, the same goes for us, as spontaneous speakers, we never lose the audience you are speaking to, how do we keep people together? we structure our responses, structure helps us orient people to set expectations if I show up and say hi, I'm Matt, I'm your tour guide, come on Wow, how many of you would go with me?

Some because they're adventurous, but the rest would say, "Hell no, where are we going?" I have the right shoes. Should I go to the bathroom first? A good tour guide. Like a good spontaneous speaker, set expectations from the beginning so you can pay attention to what's happening and not wonder what's coming next. Structure also helps connect ideas. The biggest place or most common place you will lose people as a tour guide is when you move. From one place to another, people simply move away. The same thing happens in our communication. If you use words like next second third in your transitions, then you're missing opportunities to keep people together, so structure is really important.

Let me give you an example of a structure just so you can understand it most of us are familiar with a very persuasive problem solving structure benefit if you have ever presented an idea if you have ever seen an advertisement This is how they work benefit solution problems here is a problem here is how we solve it and here is the benefit that is a structure that begins with a middle and an end now my favorite structure in the whole world is three simple questions what and what now what is your idea your belief your position your product your service your feedback, so why is it important to the person you're talking to?

And now, what's next? Maybe I'll accept your questions. Let's schedule another meeting. Let me show you a demonstration. And now? What's cool? way to package information when you get together with your friends this weekend and someone asks you what you're doing this is a great structure to update this is what I'm doing this is why I think it's important this is what I plan to do next when you are giving feedback, you can do it in this structure, feedback is what I saw or what I didn't see, so why is it important? And now, what would I like you to do differently?

So imagine. We leave a meeting together and you say Matt, how did it go? I say, well, I thought it went very well, except that when you were talking about the implementation plan, you spoke quickly and didn't give as much detail as you did in other places when you spoke quickly and without many details. People might think that you are nervous and ready for next time. Slow down and use these two addition examples. See how right now just following this structure gives me a good answer? The structure is a tool. It's like a recipe. I'm a terrible cook, but I have a much better chance of cooking well if I follow a recipe, so by having a recipe, all I have to do is put the ingredients in it.

I know how I'm going to hit it. You my comments. I just have to think about what I say in the comments, so that the structure helps you not only package the information for your audience, but it also helps you prioritize what to say, and because the information is packaged well, your audience can take that information and share it. Elsewhere, think about a job interview when you are being interviewed, you are not only trying to communicate your skills and how you could benefit the company, you are also trying to equip your interviewer with information that they can then take to others. involved. in the hiring decision and it will represent you, and if you gather that information easily, they will be able to tell your story very well, if you just give them a whole list of information, they probably won't remember it, so structure is incredibly useful in spontaneous communication in the New book, the whole second half is specific spontaneous situations, making small talk, apologizing, giving feedback, introducing yourself, answering questions and with each one I assign or give a structure that you can use.

This is not the final step, although the final step is the F-word of communication and it is not as naughty as some of you are thinking of, it is an approach that many of us when we speak in the moment we take to our audience in the journey of our discovery of what we want to say as we say it in In other words, we say more than necessary, we must be focused and concise. My mother has a saying that I love. I know she didn't create it, but she tells me the time. Don't build me the clock.

Many of us when we speak spontaneously, build watches, one because we are figuring out what we want to say, two because we want people to think we are really smart and three, we want everyone to see how hard we have worked to come up with what we are saying. It's much better to be compact and concise in what you say, so how do you do it well? We have already talked about relevance. If I think about what is really relevant to the audience, then I base everything I say on that relevance. second, you must have an objective every time you speak, whether spontaneous or planned, an objective for me 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? yes I walk into a room where I expect to be asked questions or asked to give my opinion or even make small talk.

I think to myself: what do I want people to know? How do I want them to feel? What do I want them to do? to do and that helps me focus and prioritize what I'm saying, so it's not enough to simply have a structured message, you have to focus that message to help people remember it and not be seen as rambling and giving too much information; there is another structure. I want to present to you that it is incredibly focused on being concise. This is a structure to present. People often ask me what happens if someone asks me to present an idea on the spot.

So you're getting on an elevator and your boss's boss. He walks in and they look at you and say, oh, what are you working on? I'm about to go talk to the board of directors, maybe I can help you, you have to answer four opening sentences, you just finish these sentences, what if you could, so that, for example, and That's not all, what would happen if they could? So for example, and that's not all, let me show you how it works by taking a suggestion from all of you and I'll put it into this structure and then together as a group we'll use it. this is why someone can think of a product or service that they would like to hear a proposal for what would you like to hear me give a proposal for someone to suggest one your book my book well, take a good look at it, thank you okay, I appreciate it So, my new book is about how to speak more effectively in the moment.

What if you could feel more comfortable and confident when put on the spot so you could answer questions well or give appropriate feedback? For example, imagine an upcoming job interview in which you ace. You get all your points across in a way that truly represents who you are and that's not all. You can apply these principles to small talk, apologizing, and even introducing yourself. See how simply answering those sentences allows you to come to a clear conclusion? launch, so this is what we're going to do for all of you to practice and thank you for that opportunity.

Okay, we're all here for our Stamford reunion. Let's imagine that for your next meeting you volunteer to help recruit people to return to campus. meeting so you're going to make a speech let's go over each of these four together as a group someone give me the end of this sentence what if you could? What if you could see old friends so you can walk down memory lane? and experience the things you enjoyed about being on campus, for example, someone give me an example of a memory or something exciting that you would like to share with an old friend, for example, here the band listen to the band play and sing something. of the old songs and that's not all and that's not all you can go to a big conference on communication at the moment.

I love it. See how easy it was? Do you see how the structure helps you and made it very concise? so by focusing on these two elements of messaging, structure and focus, you can speak much better in the moment, so some resources for you to continue learning these concepts and others. I host a podcast for business school called Think Fast, Talk Smart. all about communication skills. I get to interview experts from across campus and around the world on how to bebetter communicators. Many of your favorite teachers have been invited to the program and I am proud to say that this program has won many prestigious awards, including best.

Dog walking podcast and best commute podcast because our episodes are very concise and short 20 minutes, we won a few others too. Me and there is a picture of the book. Think faster, talk

smarter

. If you take a photo of this QR code. I'll take you to a lot of resources that I make available to our students here and elsewhere. I encourage all of you to think about how you can be better speakers in the moment. It takes time and practice, the only way to improve. in planned or spontaneous communication there are three things repetition reflection and feedback repetition reflection and feedback you have to practice you have to think about what works and what doesn't work and you have to seek advice and guidance from teachers, colleagues, mentors to help, that's right how we improve