Think Fast, Talk Smart: Communication Techniques

To celebrate our 75th episode, we hosted a live "Ask Me Anything" event with Matt. In this global gathering, listeners called in with questions ranging from making a first impression and giving negative feedback to presenting virtually and the worst communication advice Matt's ever received. In addition to audience questions, Matt also shares a short lecture to outline his top three guiding principles when it comes to being a confidence speaker and leader.

Show Notes:

[2:00] Know Your Audience: First and foremost is their knowledge level relative to the topic that we're discussing. Do they know a lot or do they know just a little?

Three guiding principles for Successful Communication

[3:51] Principle 1. Set Your Communication Goal: A goal has three major parts: information, emotion, and action. The best metric of success is: Is your audience leaving knowing what you want them to know? Feeling how you want them to feel? And doing what you want them to do?

[5:08] Principle 2. Structure your message. Using: What, So What, Now What.

[7:10] Principle 3. The Art of the Paraphrase.

[9:14] Using Paraphrasing to move a conversation forward

[11:01] Ask me anything:

[11:24] Question 1: What is the worst communication advice that you have ever given or received?

[13:11] Question 2: How can you try to understand the expectations or knowledge or background of your audience in order to make your presentation effective?

[16:05] Question 3: How do I communicate negative feedback to a colleague, especially when there's an action step involved?

[18:30] Question 4: How would you make your first impression?

[22:00] Question 5: How has virtual communication changed the way we communicate?

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“Make them want to turn the page,” says Paula Moya, a professor at Stanford University and author of The Social Imperative: Race, Close Reading, and Contemporary Literary Criticism.

In this episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, Moya sits down with strategic communication lecturer Matt Abrahams to share how the elements of story can be used in other types of communication. Create compelling situations, full of sense and surprise, she says. Create characters we can empathize with; speak your written sentences aloud, and, Moya advises, think of the images your words may conjure up and how they may be interpreted by different audiences.

Think Fast, Talk Smart is a podcast produced by Stanford Graduate School of Business. Each episode provides concrete, easy-to-implement tools and techniques to help you hone and enhance your communication skills.

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How others perceive us in person and via social media can impact our careers and social standing. But we can build the reputation we want through conscious communication.

On this podcast episode, strategic communication lecturers Matt Abrahams and Allison Kluger share techniques on effectively improving and managing your reputation.

Listen for details on this episode’s “homework assignment” and share on LinkedIn.

Join the community & conversation by following the Think Fast, Talk Smart LinkedIn page.

Think Fast, Talk Smart on the Stanford GSB website

Show Notes:

• Allison Kluger, Stanford GSB profile
• Reputation Rules, by Daniel Diermeier
• “How Tylenol Made a Comeback” NYTimes
• Allison Kluger: "Telling your Story Can Lead to Success and Opportunity"
• Allison Kluger: Last Lecture Series: “If Not You, Then Who”

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In this episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, lecturer and podcast host Matt Abrahams sits down with David Eagleman, a neuroscientist and the host of the PBS series The Brain, to discuss why our brains are wired for storytelling and how new senses might impact our connection and communication with others. “I’ve always been really interested in this idea of how we can pass information to the brain via unusual channels," Eagleman says. "We’ve got our eyes or ears or fingertips and our nose, we’re very used to this and we sort of think these are fundamental, but of course, this is just what we’ve inherited from a long road of evolution... It turns out you can push information in the brain in other ways.”

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