Masterclass on Communicating with Confidence
10/19/21 • 23 min
Welcome to Grit & Growth’s masterclass on communicating with confidence, featuring Matt Abrahams, Stanford Graduate School of Business lecturer in strategic communications. Whether pitching to investors, reporting to your board, or motivating employees, Abrahams has tips and tricks for managing anxiety and making an impact with both what you say and how you say it.
Abrahams knows a thing or two about communicating. Whether he’s teaching MBAs at Stanford GSB or hosting his podcast “Think Fast, Talk Smart,” he advises entrepreneurs on the value of “Speaking Up Without Freaking Out” — which is also the title of his best-selling book.
Abrahams believes confidence and mindset can be developed to alleviate anxiety and improve almost any pitch or meeting. He’s also on a personal mission to stop entrepreneurs from beginning their presentations with “Hi, my name is _______, and today we're going to talk about_________.”
“That is boring. It's silly because you're showing a slide that has your name and your topic on it. I like to joke that every good pitch should start like a James Bond movie. No, not with sex and violence, but with action, get people participating and focused ... and that's what will help people get interested in what you're saying.”
Top Seven Masterclass Takeaways
- Some anxiety is a good thing. It can give you energy and focus. Abrahams suggests using cognitive reframing to use your excitement about your business and vision to manage your fear of pitching.
- Use nonverbal cues to convey confidence ... even if you’re not feeling it. Gesture more slowly, make direct eye contact, take deep breaths to slow your speech rate down. These nonverbal cues will make people think you’re confident, which will actually make you feel more confident.
- Record yourself and watch it. Rather than judge and evaluate based upon your own internal dialogue, try to see what others will see in the pitch or presentation.
- Mindfulness can help you manage anxiety. Give yourself permission to be nervous — it’s only human. And forgive yourself if you’re nervous or make a mistake. That’s human, too.
- Create a compelling hook. Make sure it grabs people’s attention and is relevant. Abrahams explains, “If you do something different, you automatically stand out. You've got my attention just because you did something different.”
- Learn to tell your story fast and slow. Have a two-minute, 10-minute, and 30-minute version to deliver depending upon the situation.
- Consider cultural differences and pay attention to social status. Low context and high context cultures require different approaches. And hierarchy and social status should impact how you communicate.
Listen to Abrahams’ insights, advice, and strategies for how entrepreneurs can communicate with greater confidence and learn how you can improve your next pitch, board meeting, or presentation.
Please take a few moments and provide us with your feedback on Grit & Growth. We would love to hear what you’re interested in learning about and how we can make the content we create relevant to your growth journey.
Resources
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Welcome to Grit & Growth’s masterclass on communicating with confidence, featuring Matt Abrahams, Stanford Graduate School of Business lecturer in strategic communications. Whether pitching to investors, reporting to your board, or motivating employees, Abrahams has tips and tricks for managing anxiety and making an impact with both what you say and how you say it.
Abrahams knows a thing or two about communicating. Whether he’s teaching MBAs at Stanford GSB or hosting his podcast “Think Fast, Talk Smart,” he advises entrepreneurs on the value of “Speaking Up Without Freaking Out” — which is also the title of his best-selling book.
Abrahams believes confidence and mindset can be developed to alleviate anxiety and improve almost any pitch or meeting. He’s also on a personal mission to stop entrepreneurs from beginning their presentations with “Hi, my name is _______, and today we're going to talk about_________.”
“That is boring. It's silly because you're showing a slide that has your name and your topic on it. I like to joke that every good pitch should start like a James Bond movie. No, not with sex and violence, but with action, get people participating and focused ... and that's what will help people get interested in what you're saying.”
Top Seven Masterclass Takeaways
- Some anxiety is a good thing. It can give you energy and focus. Abrahams suggests using cognitive reframing to use your excitement about your business and vision to manage your fear of pitching.
- Use nonverbal cues to convey confidence ... even if you’re not feeling it. Gesture more slowly, make direct eye contact, take deep breaths to slow your speech rate down. These nonverbal cues will make people think you’re confident, which will actually make you feel more confident.
- Record yourself and watch it. Rather than judge and evaluate based upon your own internal dialogue, try to see what others will see in the pitch or presentation.
- Mindfulness can help you manage anxiety. Give yourself permission to be nervous — it’s only human. And forgive yourself if you’re nervous or make a mistake. That’s human, too.
- Create a compelling hook. Make sure it grabs people’s attention and is relevant. Abrahams explains, “If you do something different, you automatically stand out. You've got my attention just because you did something different.”
- Learn to tell your story fast and slow. Have a two-minute, 10-minute, and 30-minute version to deliver depending upon the situation.
- Consider cultural differences and pay attention to social status. Low context and high context cultures require different approaches. And hierarchy and social status should impact how you communicate.
Listen to Abrahams’ insights, advice, and strategies for how entrepreneurs can communicate with greater confidence and learn how you can improve your next pitch, board meeting, or presentation.
Please take a few moments and provide us with your feedback on Grit & Growth. We would love to hear what you’re interested in learning about and how we can make the content we create relevant to your growth journey.
Resources
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Previous Episode
Communicating Your Big Idea
Meet Martin Stimela, CEO of Botswana-based Brastorne Enterprises, and Matt Abrahams, Stanford Graduate School of Business lecturer and communications expert. As Martin prepares to pitch his business expansion plan, hear Matt’s tips on how to grab attention, harness emotions, and create a lasting connection with your audience. Then listen in on Martin’s actual pitch...and Matt’s feedback.
Almost every entrepreneur eventually needs to make a pitch to capture attention...and dollars. Martin Stimela is no exception. As CEO of Brastorne Enterprises, he’s looking to raise capital to scale his growing technology company to 19 more countries, starting with Cameroon, Ethiopia, Guinea, and Mali. His vision: to connect the unconnected by enabling Internet access without the need for expensive data plans or smartphones. Matt Abrahams shares some tips and then listens in on Martin’s pitch.
Matt Abrahams is a Stanford lecturer and host of the podcast "Think Fast, Talk Smart," and he has plenty of strategic communications advice and techniques for both Martin and fellow entrepreneurs. Before you even write the first word of your pitch, Matt suggests you need to think first about who your audience is and what they need from you.
“A fundamental mistake people make is they start by saying, here are the things I want to say. Rather, you need to focus on What do I want them to know? How do I want them to feel? And what do I want them to do?”
Here are a few pitch-worthy pieces of advice:
Create a good hook to capture people’s attention
“You know, 99% of people start with: Hi, my name is_______. Today, I'm going to talk about______. If you do something different, you automatically stand out as different.”
Introduce a character
“Think about leveraging testimonials, examples of how people are benefiting from your particular set of offerings. If we become familiar with a particular person and their situation, it makes it much more real for us than simply talking in generality.”
Be conversational
“Avoid reading word for word from a script or slides. Instead, focus on the structure of your message and the key ideas you want to get across.”
Practice by teaching
Like most things in business and life, practice makes perfect. And Matt encourages practicing by teaching.
“Something that I find very useful for entrepreneurs to do is when they're working on pitches, I invite them to actually think about how would they teach somebody else to pitch their business. So bringing on a co-founder or a colleague, how would you teach them to pitch the business by putting themselves in the role of teacher, it helps them see things that we don't typically see.”
Listen to Matt’s advice and Martin’s pitch to learn new strategies and techniques to improve your own pitch.
Stanford Graduate School of Business
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Next Episode
Profile of Purpose: One Stitch at a Time
Meet Linda Ampah, founder of KAD Manufacturing and a fashion brand called Cadling Fashions based in Ghana. Linda’s entrepreneurial journey has had all the typical hurdles plus the extra challenges of being a female business owner in Africa. That’s why providing job opportunities for women is central to her mission.
Linda has always loved the sound of sewing machines. Now she gets to hear them all the time in her factories where she manufactures school uniforms and makes garments for U.S. brands like Anthropologie and Brooklyn Industries.
“In Ghana, in the marketplaces there are women and girls who sleep on the streets. We went out asking them whether they'll be interested to come and train? And the response we got was just amazing. We invited them over and then we started training them. Now the challenge though was that because they didn't have a place to stay, they get raped. We decided we'll add housing to it. And usually after a year, they are able to rent their own place then they move from the hostel.”
Listen to Linda’s mini-profile to learn how employing women in need can have a ripple effect on an entire community.
Please take a few moments and provide us with your feedback on Grit & Growth. We would love to hear what you’re interested in learning about and how we can make the content we create relevant to your growth journey.
Resources:
Pieces of the Portrait: An Autobiography by Linda Ampah
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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