712: Matt Abrahams - How to Become a Better Communicator: Speaking With Confidence, Structuring Your Message, and Thinking Fast on Your Feet

The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk www. LearningLeader.com https://www. LearningLeader.com New Book - The Price of Becoming https://www. LearningLeader.com/Becoming Connect on social: Twitter - @RyanHawk12 https://x.com/RyanHawk12 Instagram - @RyanHawk12 https://www.instagram.com/ryanhawk12/?hl=en My Guest - Matt Abrahams is one of the world's foremost experts on communication. He's a lecturer in strategic communication at Stanford's Graduate School of Business and bestselling author of Think Faster, Talk Smarter. His focus is the hardest kind of communication: not the rehearsed speech, but knowing what to say when you're put on the spot: in the interview, the Q&A, the hallway, the toast. This is brought to you by Insight Global https://insightglobal.com/learningleader/. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world has the hustle and grit to deliver. What you'll learn in this episode: Matt's father was quiet but not shy. A lawyer, skipped a couple of grades so he was always younger than his colleagues, a man of few words and very detailed ones. Matt says what he most wants to live up to isn't the intelligence, it's that his father believed in being truthful and trustworthy. His parents asked two different questions about communication, and he's still answering both. His mother taught elementary school and wanted to know how you make it engaging and how you hold attention. His father wanted to know how you organize it and make it structured and understandable. They debated it constantly at home. Attention and structure are still the two halves of everything Matt teaches. When You're Interviewing Someone The best interview question he was ever asked: "If you were an onion and I peeled back the first several layers, what would I find?" It was the CEO's opening line, before anything else. Matt's answer: "Onions make me cry." He got the job. When he asked about the question months later, the CEO said he uses it to knock people slightly off center, and what he remembered was that Matt committed to an answer and connected it to something bigger. That's the whole move when you're put on the spot. Commit, then connect what you said to the larger picture. The content matters less than refusing to hedge. Warm call, don't cold call. Matt doesn't cold call at Stanford and won't do it in an interview either. He tells candidates up front: I'm going to ask you things that are difficult, the goal isn't a right answer; the goal is seeing how you process and how we'd collaborate. Then he asks the hard question. Blindsiding someone tells you how they handle being blindsided, which is not the job. Watch how they treat everyone who isn't you. Matt always asked whoever greeted the candidate how the interaction went, because plenty of people are rude to the front desk and flawless with the hiring manager. Teach candidates how to answer. Matt tells people at the top: answer the question, give me an example so I understand what it means, then connect it to what that would look like if you worked here. Otherwise people ramble, and you're left wondering why they told you any of it. He says it changed his interviews completely. When You're Giving a Talk Intention, attention, then relevance. How are you showing up, what energy and emotion are you bringing, and what will grab the room? Then, fast, why this is worth their time. "Attention is a gift people give you. If they don't see a return on that, they're gonna check out." Start like an action movie. How does an action movie start? With action. Not "hi, my name is, and today I'm going to talk about," which is also just reading your first slide out loud. Tell a story, ask a question, take a poll, give a startling statistic, and introduce yourself afterward if at all. The first thing Matt's students hear him say each term: "Communication is critical to your success in business and in your personal life." If you're a nervous speaker, NEVER pre-apologize. Saying you're a nervous speaker feels like buying empathy. What it actually does is prime the room to notice every piece of evidence that confirms it, and it pulls attention off what you're saying. Just start. How you end matters almost more than how you start. We remember what we hear last, and it recolors everything before it. A wonderful vacation gets remembered a little less wonderfully if the flight home is delayed and the luggage is lost. But the second you signal you're ending, people leave. Say "in conclusion" on a video call and, like Pavlov's dogs, they're opening their calendar. You don't have much runway, so know exactly what the last thing is. Know, feel, do. Every communication should have a goal in three parts: what you want people to know, how you want them to feel, what you want them to do. Build everything on it, then close by restating it in your own words. It summarizes and gives a sense of completion at the same time. Don't memorize. It's connection, not perfection. A memorized script means part of your brain is permanently comparing what you're saying to what you meant to say, like having too many apps open and each one running slower. That's the bandwidth you need for the actual goal. There's also research showing the more you memorize, the more you forget. Write it out, then distill it to a structure. Writing the whole thing out is fine, especially if you're new to the topic or not a native speaker. Then reduce it to a roadmap. Problem, solution, benefit is one, and most people already know it because television ads are built that way. Practice from the structure, not the script. What, so what, now what. The what is the information. The so what is why it matters to this particular person. The now what is what happens next. It fits an update, a teaching moment, an email, where the subject line becomes the now what and the body carries the rest. Structure isn't decoration; it's retention. Cognitive neuroscientists have found structured information is remembered at least 40 percent better. The goal is fidelity, and a leader's job isn't just to communicate but to deliver a message other people can repeat accurately. If a number or a quote has to be exact, read it and say you're reading it. "I wanna make sure I get this right." That's cleaner than memorizing, which just makes you more nervous and builds distance. Slides should simplify, amplify, or clarify. If a slide doesn't do one of those three for your audience, it doesn't need to exist. TED proved you can give a powerful talk with none. A slide full of words forces people to multitask. Spoken and written language run through the same part of the brain, so text on screen competes with your voice. Images and charts run through visual processing instead, and the two together make the point more memorable. Slides are for your audience, not a teleprompter for you. Humor is black belt level engagement. It's the riskiest tool there is. Never run a joke for the first time in a high-stakes room, and listen to what happens when you test it. Questions, stories, and asking people to do something physical are all safer ways to get the same engagement. And the rule that keeps you out of trouble: humor about yourself, not about others. Never lose your tour group. Matt was a campus tour guide in college, and the single most important thing they trained him on wasn't storytelling or vocal variety. It was not losing anybody. The same applies to an audience: set expectations so they know where they're going, connect where you've been to where you're headed instead of jumping between points, and keep them motivated to move. And notice where every campus tour ends. The bookstore. People need something to take away. When You're Making Small Talk Small talk leads to big things. Think about your actual friends, not your social media ones. At least one of them exists because of small talk. The goal is to be interested, not interesting. From Rachel Greenwald, who studies how people form relationships. Which means asking questions and then leaving room for the answer. Three words make you good at it: "Tell me more." Ask a question, listen, then ask for more, and mean it. Exit with a white flag. Not surrender. In auto racing, the white flag goes out on the final lap. Most people end small talk by reaching for biology, saying they need the bathroom or another drink, which backfires the moment the other person needs the same thing. Instead: "This has been great. In a minute I'm going to go talk to someone over there, but before I do, I want to hear more about..." They know it's ending, you get one more real question, and you both walk away clean. When You're Trying to Get Better A few filler words now make you sound human. Some disfluency is normal and natural, and in a world where anything can be polished by AI, a few verbal foibles are evidence a real person is talking. The problem is only volume. The breathing trick that kills the filler words. Try saying "um" while inhaling. You can't. Speaking is an exit-only event. The filler words that stand out are the ones sitting in silence between sentences, so if you train yourself to land every phrase out of breath, you're forced to inhale before the next one, and nothing can fit in that gap except a pause. To practice, read a list out loud once or twice a day, your calendar works, and run out of air at the end of every item. Watch and listen to yourself, and read out loud. Reviewing your own recordings is awful, which Matt compares to the dentist: nobody enjoys it, everybody's glad they went. Reading aloud builds vocal stamina the same way a treadmill builds a marathon. Nobody wakes up and runs 26 miles untrained, and most leaders aren't used to speaking for long stretches either. Costco credibility beats college and career credibility. Your background and your resume are real credibility, and they matter. But Costco hands out free samples because an experience of the thing beats a description of it. Most people over-index on listing credentials. Tell stories, give examples, use testimonials, and let people taste it. There is no right way to communicate, only better and worse ways. Matt resists the word expert. Early in his teaching, he'd gesture and watch an entire class decide that was the correct way to move your hands. Saying it out loud takes pressure off the room and off him. Matt's champagne moment a year from now: people being more confident, clear, and compelling in how they communicate. He thinks the world needs to hear everyone's voice and that clarity is what makes that possible. He knows it's working when an email arrives from a town he has to look up on Google. Daily reflection, one minute, for 16 years. Every night before bed, Matt writes down one thing that went well in his communication and one thing that didn't. Every Sunday he spends about five minutes reviewing the week and picks one thing to work on. Action Take the next talk or meeting you're running. What are the first fifteen words out of your mouth, and would they work as the opening shot of a movie? Who did you talk to today where you were trying to be interesting instead of interested? What would have happened if you'd said "tell me more" one more time? If you enjoyed this episode with Matt Abrahams, check out episode #709 with Vanessa Van Edwards: http://learningleader.com/vanessa How to Connect With Anyone & Make Every Interaction Count Podcast Chapters 00:00 Apply for the Learning Leader Circle 01:36 Meet Matt Abrahams 02:56 What He Carries From His Father 04:53 "If You Were an Onion..." 07:16 Warm Call, Don't Cold Call 08:52 How He Got Better at Hiring 13:35 Going From Silence to Brilliance 16:20 Know, Feel, Do 19:04 Never Tell Them You're Nervous 21:34 Why Memorizing Backfires 23:50 Simplify, Amplify, or Clarify 25:34 Start Like an Action Movie 27:03 The Question That Moves a Room 29:56 Never Lose Your Tour Group 32:21 Humor Is Black Belt Engagement 33:44 Three Words: "Tell Me More" 36:51 One Minute Every Night for 16 Years 40:06 What, So What, Now What 42:42 Breathing Out Your Filler Words 46:00 Read Out Loud for Vocal Stamina 47:44 Costco Credibility 49:43 The Champagne Question 52:25 EOPC

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Ryan Hawk?

  Applications are now open for our next Learning Leader Circle. You can go to learningleaderscircle.com to apply. I thought it would be helpful for you to hear from some current members of my Learning Leader Circle. Here they are.

• 0:17Speaker 01

  I chose Learning Leader Circle because I wanted to be around really winning professionals, people killing at work, but even better people.

• 0:25Speaker 02

  Ryan does such an amazing job of vetting the group. It's all A-players. It is all amazing rock star people who want everybody to become their best and just add value to the group.

• 0:37Speaker 03

  We have people with agriculture backgrounds. We have people with white collar backgrounds, blue collar backgrounds, people in education.

• 0:43Speaker 04

  The totality of the room is very impressive with the amount of knowledge we have to be gained. But when you sit down and you break out with five, six, seven people, you can have that intimate, that in-depth conversation that allows you to go a little bit deeper.

• 0:56Speaker 05

  We got additional coaches this year. They live their lives according to what they teach. These guys will all jump in and get you back on course.

• 1:05Speaker 06

  Definitely do it. Don't think twice about it. Know that you're going to leave with new relationships, new takeaways to make you better at your job, better as a parent and as a person. So it was just a very intimate, very inclusive environment.

• 1:26Ryan Hawk?

  To apply for our next Learning Leader Circle, go to learningleaderscircle.com.

• 1:36Ryan Hawk?

  Welcome to the Learning Leader Show presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawke. Thank you so much for being here. Go to learningleader.com for show notes of this and all podcast episodes. Go to learningleader.com. Now, on to tonight's featured leader. Matt Abrahams is one of the world's leading experts on communication. He's a lecturer in strategic communication at Stanford's Graduate School of Business and the bestselling author of Think Faster, Talk Smarter. His whole body of work is about the hardest kind of communication.

• 2:17Ryan Hawk?

  Not the polished, rehearsed speech, but knowing what to say in the moment, on a stage, in a job interview, or just making small talk. During our conversation, we discussed the best interview question he was ever asked and what his answer taught him about hiring people. Then he shares a breathing trick that will kill your filler words. Then the three words his mother-in-law used to get great at small talk. And he shares the one-minute daily habit he's kept for 16 years to keep getting better as a communicator. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my conversation with Matt Abrahams.

• 3:02Ryan Hawk?

  I enjoyed learning a little bit about your dad. You said he was the most intelligent person you knew.

• 3:08Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 3:08Ryan Hawk?

  Quiet, but not shy. This makes me think of my dad, who was still my number one mentor in my life. Quiet, but not shy. The guy who's going to wait to speak, but then when he does, the entire room stops and goes, "Oh, yeah, that's the thing." I'd love to learn more about your dad and what you learned from him.

• 3:27Speaker 07

  Yeah, your dad sounds almost exactly like my father. My father was a man of few words, but really important, detailed words. He was really, really intelligent. And back in the day, he was skipped a couple of grades. So he was much younger than his colleagues. And I think that that had a big impact on him. But very thoughtful, very logical, was a lawyer, so very much into argumentation and detail. And the thing, I respect many things about my father and my mother as well. But my father was not only a good person, but he believed in being truthful and trustworthy. And those are things that I've really tried to live up to.

• 4:02Ryan Hawk?

  What a great man.

• 4:04Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 4:04Ryan Hawk?

  How does his legacy live on within you?

• 4:07Speaker 07

  Oh, thank you. That's a very touching question, and I reflect on that often. I hope I do justice to his legacy. My father was all about helping people, all about really getting to the bottom of things, solving tough problems. And I try to do that. And in the work I do through the podcast I host, Think Fast, Talk Smart, the writing, the teaching, all of that is trying to help others hone and develop their communication skills. So there's a little bit of that, I think, is honoring my father and his desire. And interestingly, my mother was an elementary school teacher. And so communication was always something we were talking about in our family. My mother was like, "How do you make it engaging? How do you get people to focus?" My father's like, "How do you organize it? How do you make it structured, understandable?" So we would debate communication all the time in my family.

• 4:49Speaker 07

  So it's not strange that that's something I spend a lot of my own time with.

• 4:53Ryan Hawk?

  I learned a question from reading your work that I have never asked before, and I kind of want to ask it to you, just to see what you say. Are you cool with that?

• 5:02Speaker 07

  I am. Let's do it.

• 5:03Ryan Hawk?

  If you were, sorry, okay. If you were an onion and I peeled back your first three layers, what would I find?

• 5:14Speaker 07

  Yes. Can I give a little context before I give the answer?

• 5:17Ryan Hawk?

  Please, please.

• 5:18Speaker 07

  So I was interviewing for a job, and I had made it far along in the process. So I'm going to meet with the CEO of the company. This was a small startup at the time. The CEO was still interviewing everybody. I walk into the room, and he's already there, which freaked me out because I'm used to the executives coming in late, rushing in, not having a lot of time for you. He's there with my resume, looking at the door when I walk in. And so whoever escorted me got me there just in time. He welcomed me, we shook hands, and that was the first question he asked me. "If you were an onion and I peeled back the first several layers, what would I find?" In that moment, I'm like, "Oh, my gosh. What the heck is going on here?" And I made a decision. I made a decision to be truthful, honest, and direct.

• 6:02Speaker 07

  And so what I said, my answer was, "Onions make me cry. I am somebody who, it brings my full emotion and being to work." And when you asked that question, the first thing I thought about was just being present and being somebody who brings my emotions, my passions and my concerns. We ended up talking about Bambi, I think, as well afterwards. And I ended up getting the job. And weeks or months later, I asked him, I said, "Hey, Keith, what's up with that question?" And he said he uses it to just put people a little off-center to see how they respond. And he remembered my response, and he had interviewed lots of people since then. And he said what he liked about the response is I committed to something and I connected it to a broader picture, what it meant for me at work and what it meant for the company.

• 6:46Speaker 07

  And so it was an interesting question, but I think a better example for what do you do when you're put on the spot? And I think the answer is you commit and you try to connect what you say to the broader, bigger picture.

• 6:57Ryan Hawk?

  One of them that I heard is like, "How many windows are in New York City?" Or other versions of stuff like that. I'm just curious what you think overall of those questions. Do you like them? Do you use them? This one seemed to be an incredible story. So I really liked the end result, but it also helped that you answered it so well. So I'm just curious what you think about those overall.

• 7:16Speaker 07

  I was a hiring manager for a number of years. I grew an organization from two people to 85 people in a very short amount of time. So I'm very familiar with hiring people and having to make quick judgments. I do think there is value in figuring out how people manage under pressure, how they handle pressure. But I don't like putting people on a spot that really makes them feel uncomfortable. And so I think there is a way to do that that isn't just out of the blue, first question, "What happens when I peel back an onion?" And this is what I do when I teach. When I teach at Stanford's Business School, I don't believe in cold calling. I believe in warm calling. And so in interviews, I would say, "One of the things I want to figure out is how you fit in and how you handle difficult, challenging situations.

• 7:59Speaker 07

  So I'm going to ask you some questions that are difficult and challenging. The goal is not the right answer. The goal is to best understand how you process things, how I can collaborate with you, how you can fit in." And then I might say, "How many windows are in New York City?" Or whatever the question is. I think it's important to prepare people because at work, you know things are going to be challenging and you know things are going to be difficult. So you're warm called for the work as well. Out of the blue, hitting somebody with that is unfair. Some people can respond well to it, and others find it more challenging.

• 8:30Ryan Hawk?

  I'm fascinated by the hiring process, especially hiring leaders. We all have had moments where we failed at this. If you've hired enough people, you've definitely hired some duds. Not that they're bad people, but just to...

• 8:44Speaker 07

  Just not a right fit.

• 8:45Ryan Hawk?

  You make a poor choice, right?

• 8:47Speaker 07

  Right.

• 8:47Ryan Hawk?

  And we get fooled. Everyone's on their best behavior. We get it. I'm curious... What have you learned over the years in the hiring process to increase your batting average as you went to make the right choice more frequently now than you did maybe earlier in your career?

• 9:05Speaker 07

  I think it's really an insightful question and a really important part of the process. Like most communication, for me, it's about expectation setting and homework in advance. So I spend time when I interview somebody doing some deep dive into them. I'm not walking in and looking at their LinkedIn profile or resume for the first time before I interview them. I've thought about it. I've looked at their background. I've looked at companies, if I don't know what they are, see what those companies do, what role they had. So I do my homework. I also reach out to them before I interview and set expectations. Say, this is going to be a conversation or this is going to be an opportunity where we'll do some talking. I'm going to give you a couple of problems, see how you'll solve them, give you an opportunity to ask me some questions and then we'll have a discussion.

• 9:49Speaker 07

  So I think setting expectations upfront for what I'm looking for from them, not the specific skillset, but how it's going to go is really helpful. And I'll tell you something I started doing when I was growing that one group. I actually, when the person would show up, two things. One, I would talk to the people that met them and say, how was the interaction when they met you? I have found many people treat the folks who are greeting and moving them around very rudely. And then they're perfect when they meet with me as the hiring manager.

• 10:17Ryan Hawk?

  That's crazy though. Think about it. Is that crazy? Like that's such, that's like interviewing 101 that people, isn't that wild though?

• 10:24Speaker 07

  Yeah, the best example of that, I had a second story office. I was able to look out on the parking lot. The guy I was interviewing was clearly running late, cut somebody off, pulled into a parking space, you know, at an angle that made it, would have made it difficult for the other person to come out, runs in, treats the receptionist poorly, shows up, does an amazing interview. We didn't hire him. We got insight into who the person really was by the behaviors. The other thing I do is I actually teach people early in an interview how I want them to answer questions. So I will often say, and this is a structure I like, I'm a big fan of structure. I say, when you answer a question for me, I want you to answer the question. I want you to give me an example so I can really understand what that means. And then I want you to help me connect your answer to what that means if you were to work here.

• 11:06Speaker 07

  So you answer the question, you give an example, and then you explain what that means in terms of the value it provides me and the company I work for. You've probably seen this too, when you interview people, people ramble, they're all over the place. And then you're left saying, did they answer the question? Why did they tell me that? So I would actually say, it helps me, when you answer the question, give me an example and help me connect how what you've just said will help you be a good employee here. Dramatically changed the way my interviews went. Gave me much more insight.

• 11:34Ryan Hawk?

  That's good advice for anybody at any time, like that exact thing right there. Try to figure it out because ultimately when someone's hiring you for something, they need you to help them solve some sort of a problem.

• 11:46Speaker 07

  That's right.

• 11:46Ryan Hawk?

  They need you to make their life better. If not, they would just do it, right? But they need somebody else to do it. There's not enough time for them to do it or whatever. So that's why they need you. You have to help them see how you're going to solve that problem. It's about them. It's not about you. And I think that's where people miss. I did not expect to get on interviewing at all with you, Matt, but that's why I love this. But I am curious, before we started recording, I don't know if this is just as normal for you, but you made it a point to tell me that you listened to a number of my episodes and complimented me on that. Was that intentionally done by you to bring us closer together before I click record? Because if so, it worked.

• 12:25Speaker 07

  Well, no, I mean, I was not doing that to be manipulative. I was doing that because in the flow of our conversation, it was an appropriate thing for me to say. Like I said, when I do interviewing, I do, when I'm fortunate enough to be interviewed on great shows like yours, I have listened to your show before in the past, but I wanted to listen to several different types of episodes to remind myself of the way you ask questions, the way you follow up. Because I want to be the best guest I can be and I really want to make sure that I can hone that in. And I was being very genuine when I said, hey, I think you do a good job of this. I mean, I host a show too. I know how hard it is. And so I wasn't ingratiating. I was, I was really just reporting out.

• 13:05Ryan Hawk?

  No, it felt as genuine as anybody I've ever talked to. And I love this idea of being able to get close to somebody quickly.

• 13:15Speaker 07

  Yes. Rapport building is important. Making that connection is important.

• 13:19Ryan Hawk?

  And just going straight into it. And I felt like that happened and we pressed record pretty quickly, but, but still that, those few minutes of getting to know one another, it's like, wow, this is the way it should begin. It didn't feel manipulative at all. It just felt like, hey.

• 13:32Speaker 07

  I'm glad because it wasn't intended to be.

• 13:34Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah, yeah. I give a lot of speeches. I work with others who give speeches, leaders that are part of this are doing town halls. They're giving speeches all the time. I'm particularly curious to learn from you about the beginnings of speeches. I mean, like the very first words you say, whether it's me on stage in front of a thousand people giving a keynote, or it's the manager with 12 people or the CEO at a town hall. I realize there are differences between those things. However, you as someone who is an expert, one of the best in the world at helping people become better communicators, what are the ideal ways to start a speech?

• 14:14Speaker 07

  Well, you are too kind. I don't know that I live up to what you've just said, but certainly I've spent a lot of time on this. I really focus on what I call commencing, how you start. And I'm, I've been fascinated for decades with going from silence to brilliance. How do you do that? A few things are in mind. One is intent, your intention, how you show up. And then it's attention, getting attention from the other people. So those are the two things I really focus on. How are you showing up? Is your energy focused? Is there an emotion you want to convey? I believe you should start in a way that gets attention. To my mind, attention is the most precious commodity we have in the world today. Our attention is constantly being scattered. So I don't like the slow roll.

• 14:58Speaker 07

  Hi, how are you? Oh, nice to see you.

• 15:01Ryan Hawk?

  Thank you so much for having me, guys.

• 15:02Speaker 07

  Every class I teach, I don't start with, good morning, take your seats. I just make a statement. I come out and say something. I'm starting my classes shortly after we record this. The very first thing my students will hear me say, they'll be clamoring, it's because it's coming off of summer, they'll all be catching up with each other. The very first thing I'm going to say is, I will say, communication is critical to your success in business and in your personal life. That's the very first thing they hear me say. It's to the point, it has conviction and it gets attention. It doesn't have to be that directive. It could be a question. It could be a story, but we need to start by engaging the audience first. And then very quickly after, we have to tell them what value they are going to get from the time we're spending together.

• 15:48Speaker 07

  Attention is a gift people give you. If they don't see a return on that, they're going to check out. So very quickly, there has to be value. Now, you could say it explicitly. I can say, by attending this class, you're going to gain these skills. That's very explicit. Or I could ask a question. I could say, think of a time where you didn't live up to your expectations for your communication. That's what this class is all about. It's another way of setting expectations and showing relevance. So for me, it's about intention, attention, and then very quickly making it relevant.

• 16:20Ryan Hawk?

  Man, I could spend the rest of the time just on this, but I'll just, maybe I'll do one more. How about closing a talk? We all, even I've seen some of the best still kind of struggle with this and I wrestle with closing. What's the best way to close?

• 16:33Speaker 07

  So do you know the most frequent way work communication closes? It's something like this, uh, I guess we're out of time or somebody needs the room.

• 16:40Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah.

• 16:41Speaker 07

  You know, how you end matters almost even more than how you start. We remember what we hear last a lot and it colors our perception of everything that happened before. Think of this, if you go on an amazing holiday, an amazing vacation and you come back and the flight back is delayed, your luggage is lost, it's late, that wonderful vacation is remembered slightly less wonderfully because of that. How you end really matters. But at the same time, as soon as you signal your ending, people check out. When you're on a Zoom team or meets call and you say, in conclusion, like Pavlov's dogs, your audience goes and clicks exit meeting, bring up their calendar. It's just reflexive. So you don't have a lot of time. The way I like to end is three things.

• 17:25Speaker 07

  I believe all communication should be goal driven. You should have a goal for what you're doing. To me, it has three parts, know, feel, do. What do you want people to know? How do you want them to feel? What do you want them to do? If you structure your communication, whatever it is, the stories you tell, the financial data you report, whatever it is, know, feel, do. You should be able to end by summarizing the know, feel, do. You might not use these exact words, but I might say, thank you for your time. I hope you're leaving this, knowing this, feeling this and ready to do this or willing to do this. Change the words to be comfortable, but if everything you've said is built on that goal, stating it at the end, not only summarizes it, but it gives it a sense of closure and completion.

• 18:06Ryan Hawk?

  Know, feel, do. What would be an example of like knowing something, feeling something in one of your classes or in a speech?

• 18:12Speaker 07

  Let me give you an example of my goal, because I thought about this for our interview today. I always do this before I go in. I would like people to leave here knowing best practices for effective communication based on the work I've done and the research and the writings. I want them to feel confident that they could take some of the tools that you and I discussed today and employ them right away and see a difference in their communication. And I want them to do that. I want them to take a few things away. So I want them to know the tools. I want them to feel confident that they could try it. And I want them to put a few of the things you and I talk about today into practice. That's my goal, and that's guiding everything I'm saying. So if at the end of our conversation, you say, Matt, do you have anything else you'd like to say? I could say, thanks so much, Ryan, for the time. I really hope you and your audience feel they are leaving here today with some tools they can use.

• 18:57Speaker 07

  They're excited to use them. And ultimately, their communication improves as a result of our conversation. And that's how I wrap up.

• 19:04Ryan Hawk?

  Do you feel this, uh, this is maybe a stupid question, like a weird pressure to be perfect when it comes to every word you say on this podcast or in your class, because you're an expert communicator?

• 19:17Speaker 07

  Yeah, so I don't like that word.

• 19:18Ryan Hawk?

  By the way, to James Clear about habits, like, you feel this pressure to have perfect habits because you're the habits guy, or now you're the communication guy? Do you feel like a weird pressure to saying the right word every time?

• 19:29Speaker 07

  Well, what I feel most weird about is when people keep saying expert, because I have a wife who will tell you that I am not an expert. In fact, there's a lot of work I need to do. Early in my career, yes. When I first started teaching, I would start and I would gesture and I would watch the whole class. Watch my hand go this way. And it's like, oh, my goodness, everybody thinks that's the right way to do it. There is no right way to communicate. There are better ways and worse ways. And once I acknowledge that for myself and I share that with others, it takes pressure off them and it takes pressure off me. I cannot tell you the number of times I'm introduced to do a keynote and the person says, I am so nervous introducing Matt because, I mean, almost everybody does it. They get the laugh. But I don't want to make people nervous. I want to make people comfortable. So please don't look at what I do and say that's the right way. It is not.

• 20:13Speaker 07

  It is a way and it works for me.

• 20:15Ryan Hawk?

  And it's actually a piece of advice to others, maybe because I get the same thing when I go on somebody else's podcast, they'll like open with that. And I'm like, this is not a good open. Don't do that. Don't say I'm so nervous because you host a podcast, blah, blah, blah. Don't do that. Just do it. Just go into it. You don't have to say you're nervous or, or tell me because I've done more podcasts or something. It's weird. I think it helps the host or the guest or the listener to do things like that.

• 20:37Speaker 07

  No, and in fact, one of my biggest bits of advice for people who are anxious, nervous speakers is do not pre-apologize. Because we think what we're doing is buying empathy. When I say, oh, I'm a really nervous speaker, we think we're buying empathy from you. All we are doing is priming you to pay attention to everything I do that confirms I'm nervous. So I am in effect, making you more sensitive in my nervousness and distracting you from what I'm saying. Just start, just like you said, just start.

• 21:03Ryan Hawk?

  And it's funny, I've heard somebody who does the communication thing actually say the opposite of what you just said. And I completely disagreed with them at the time because I don't think it helps you to admit you're nervous. I don't think that helps. The audience, by the way, they are rooting for you to do well. They want you to do well. When you open with something like that, it almost like makes them not root as much for you. It's bizarre, you know?

• 21:28Speaker 07

  It disconnects. It disconnects, you know? And we don't go around sharing our emotions in that way.

• 21:33Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah. What about, uh, memorizing a speech? I don't do this, but I know some people who do it, like TED Talks and some people I work with in corporate America. They'll have new talks every, I don't know, few months and they'll, we'll sit together and they'll write the whole thing. I'm like, dude, are you going to memorize this? Yeah, yeah. Wow, that seems so hard. Why is it a bad idea to memorize?

• 21:54Speaker 07

  So I am, I am anti-memorizing. I am not anti-writing something out completely. Let me explain. I'll answer your question, which is why is memorizing so bad? When you memorize, you have created the right way to say it, at least in your mind. That's the right way to say it. And essentially, your brain is like a computer. It's not a perfect analogy, but let's use it. You know, on your laptop, tablet or phone, when you have lots of windows or apps open, each one of those is performing less well because the others are open. They're each sucking some of the precious CPO bandwidth. Your brain's the same way. So if I have my memorized way of doing it, part of my brain, while I am communicating, is constantly assessing and comparing what I'm saying to what I intended to say,

• 22:36Speaker 07

  which means I have less cognitive bandwidth to focus on the real goal of communication, which is connection. So I tell my students all the time, it's about connection, not perfection. Now, writing out a script is not a bad idea, especially if you're a non-native speaker or you're novice or nervous to your topic, write it out. But once you have it written out, then distill it down into a structure. A structure is a roadmap. Problem, solution, benefit. That's a structure. Most people know that because television advertisements are in that structure. Problem, solution, benefit. Many others. I have lots of favorite structures. Take the structure and become very familiar with it. Don't memorize it, but know your structure. Practice from the structure.

• 23:21Speaker 07

  That way I can have a conversation and connect with you rather than worrying about word for word. Now, I am always asked at this point, but in my profession, I have to make sure I say it exactly right, or that number has to be exactly, great, read it. Say, hey, this is important. I want to make sure I read this quote right, or I get this number right. Do that rather than try to memorize it, because all you do is make yourself more nervous, you build distance. And actually, there's research that says the more you memorize, the more you forget.

• 23:50Ryan Hawk?

  What about a PowerPoint?

• 23:52Speaker 07

  So slides can be very useful. I have a very simple rule. Slides should do three things. They should simplify, amplify or clarify for your audience. Simplify, amplify or clarify. So not every point needs a slide. TED has shown us that you can give long, motivational, powerful talks with no slides. If you have something that's important and you think a slide will help simplify, amplify or clarify, then create a slide. But that slide should not be all words. Words actually end up making it harder for your audience to understand. We have one area of our brain primarily associated with verbal information, spoken or written. So if I'm speaking and I've got a lot of words on a slide, I'm asking you to multitask and we're not good at that.

• 24:33Speaker 07

  Rather have an image, a chart or pictures that reinforce what you're saying. So you're actually using different parts of the brain, the visual processing, not the verbal processing, and those together make the information more memorable. So slides can help, but they're for your audience. They're not a teleprompter for you.

• 24:50Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah, I love using pictures to help reinforce and make the story even stronger. Because if I'm talking about, for example, me climbing a mountain, it can be kind of cool to actually see me on the mountain, you know? It doesn't, it's not necessary. I don't have to have it, but it can add to it. It can amplify, I guess, to use your language of, oh, okay, now I can actually see it now. None of their bandwidth is used. They're just like, oh, okay, cool picture. But they're not reading words or trying to write anything. They're still looking at me, but they just can glance and notice. And I think that can help those types of things where it makes your stories a little stronger because it adds another sense, like there's sight to it. I think that that's a good use of slides.

• 25:32Speaker 07

  Absolutely. And can I add one other thing? To go back to a previous question where, you know, how do you start? I am on a personal mission to get presentations that have slides to stop starting like, hi, my name is, and today I'm going to talk about. Not only is that disengaging, and I see through you're laughing, you agree, but that's what's on the first slide somebody has. So literally, you're just reading your first slide. I would much rather, I tell everybody, start your communication like an action movie. How does an action movie start? With action. I'm not saying jump out of a plane or crash a car, but tell a story, ask a question, take a poll, give a startling statistic, and then introduce yourself. And when you do that, your audience will pay more attention.

• 26:13Ryan Hawk?

  It's so true, man. It's wild, though, how that gets violated almost every time. I changed a few years ago with this. I have different ones, compelling questions that really move you to the edge of your seat. They don't care who I am. They literally don't care. By the way, I was just given probably a very poor intro up on the stage. That doesn't matter. They don't care at all. But if I engage them immediately with a question and maybe a picture that brings that home, I can introduce myself later or never. It's really about them and trying to speak to them and help them and move them and create some sort of behavior change. Ultimately, like, hi, I am so-and-so and I've done all this incredible stuff. They're like, good for you, dude. I don't care. Like, I care about me. How are you going to help me?

• 26:54Ryan Hawk?

  So let's start helping them literally immediately by moving them just to the edge of their seat because of the way we open, you know?

• 27:02Speaker 07

  Absolutely. Do you mind if I ask, can you give me an example of a question you have found is really intriguing or useful?

• 27:09Ryan Hawk?

  What I, uh, so I borrowed this from an essay about high agency. It says you wake up in a third world jail cell. Who is the first person you call to get you out? And you're like, what?

• 27:27Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 27:27Ryan Hawk?

  Why would you ask that? And so without spoiling it, because I'm actually going to give this talk in two days. It's a talk about being a high agency leader and the person you would call is probably the most high agency person you know. So it gets them thinking about.

• 27:42Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 27:43Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah. So it gets them thinking about them being the person that other people would call. And so the rest of the talk is a series of stories and ideas and practical application. They could to be a high agency leader. So it starts though, there's no intro. Again, they don't care who I am, all that stuff. I never do an intro. After it's over, I'll put up a slide that has like a ways to get in touch and stuff. But that's when the speech is over. It's mostly first question. And it's funny, we started filming the crowds when I bring my video guys to literally see people lean forward or look at their neighbor or kind of like, huh? And it just because it's so different from what they used to, especially if they're at like a, a meeting and there's a lot of speakers and the speakers have other things that they do.

• 28:28Ryan Hawk?

  They just happen to be giving a talk because they work at the company. So it's so jarring for people because it's so different from what they're used to the rest of the day.

• 28:35Speaker 07

  I really like that as a start.

• 28:37Ryan Hawk?

  What about you? Do you have a good one to open with?

• 28:39Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, I'll share in a second, but, but I want to just comment on yours if you don't mind. What I like about it so much is it's so visceral. You're in a third world country in a jail, right? So it gets to emotion.

• 28:50Ryan Hawk?

  I have a picture of a third world jail cell like with it. So you can, you can actually.

• 28:54Speaker 07

  Make it more powerful.

• 28:55Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 28:55Speaker 07

  Yeah, 100%. And it really helps bring people forward because it's so different than something else. And when you ask a question, your brain lights up when people ask questions. So when I teach my classes, I never say today I'm going to cover three points. I always say, I'm going to answer three questions and frame everything as questions. It's much more engaging. So I really like that. I will often, I like taking people into the future or the past. I love what I call time traveling language. I'll say, picture this, or what would it be like if? So I put people in that circumstance and make them either curious or desirous of it. Or I remind them, I'll say, think back to when a time where you were really confident or think back to when a communication didn't go the way you wanted.

• 29:37Speaker 07

  So what I'm doing is not only getting them to see it, I'm getting them to feel it. And now I'm also sharing some of the relevance about what I, I'm going to take you to that point or help you avoid that other point. That's how I like to start, but there is no right way to start, except to make it compelling, engaging and not, hi, my name is.

• 29:56Ryan Hawk?

  Did I read right that you were a tour guide at one point?

• 29:59Speaker 07

  You did. So when I was in college, I was desperate for money and it was the highest paying job I could get. So I was a tour guide. To this day, I can, if, if I were standing, I can walk backwards and talk still as a result of that training.

• 30:12Ryan Hawk?

  In order to be an effective tour guide, I assume there are some skills you got to develop. What did you learn doing that that has helped you since then?

• 30:18Speaker 07

  So you're setting me up for one of my most common jokes. I would say good jokes, but you can be the judge. But I will often ask my audiences, I'll say, I was a tour guide. What do you think is the most important thing? They trained us and people say, oh, tell good stories, vary your voice, be funny. No, the single most important thing they taught us, and this is very true. They said, never lose your tour group. You are a bad tour guide if you get people lost. And where I went to school, they were afraid if people got lost, they would get hurt and sue the university. So they would literally tell us, do not lose anybody on your tour. But I took that as an analogy, as a metaphor, as a communicator, never lose your audience. We do so many things to confuse and befuddle our audience. You have to be a tour guide. What does a good tour guide do?

• 31:03Speaker 07

  They set expectations upfront. If you don't know where you're going, you're nervous the whole lot. Where am I going? Should I go to the bathroom first? Do I have to put on different shoes? No, I tell you, we're going to go here. We're not going to go there. So you can say, okay, I'm cool. I'm ready. And a good tour guide connects where you've been to where you're going. I cannot tell you how many people in their communication don't transition well. They just go from one point to the next. That's jarring. A good tour guide knows that you're going to wander off if they don't motivate you to move from where you are to where you want to be. So being a tour guide taught me a lot about how to communicate better. Set expectations, bring people along, keep them motivated. And I'll ask you this, Ryan, where does every tour of a college campus end? The bookstore.

• 31:46Speaker 07

  You need to have things people can take away, right? That's why they bring you to the bookstore. You have to have things people can take away from your talks and from your writing. So I learned a lot as a tour guide.

• 31:56Ryan Hawk?

  So this is fresh for me. My daughter's in college, so we went on a lot of visits and I vividly remember the one at University of Tennessee. But I'll tell you why he was so good. None, none of them chose Tennessee, but it did make it closer. He was funny. He told us that he was a master of dad jokes and then he proceeded to actually follow through on that promise at the very beginning. He had a partner, so it helps they could play off each other. And where does humor come into play? Because this is something that is, man, it's a skill, but it's hard. And sometimes when you try it, you're not funny, it's not good. How does humor play a role in this?

• 32:33Speaker 07

  So what we're really talking about is engagement. Engagement is sustained attention. Attention is hard. Keeping it is even harder. And humor is what I call black belt level engagement. It is risky. I have two colleagues, Jennifer Acker and Naomi Bagdonas. They teach with me at Stanford's Business School and they teach a whole class on humor, levity. How do you use it as a leader? How do you use it in business? And they'll be the first to tell you that you really need to be thoughtful and test out your humor. So the first time you try a joke should not be in a high stakes situation. You should test it out and definitely listen to what people say. Humor is a great way to connect. It's a shared experience. There are a whole bunch of neurochemicals that are released when you laugh, including

• 33:18Speaker 07

  those associated with affiliation. So you want to be with the people you're with, but it is risky. There are much safer ways to engage, asking questions, telling stories, getting people to do something physically, like raise their hand that are safer. But humor can be really useful, but you have to be careful with it. And I always advise my students and the people I coach, humor about yourself, not about others.

• 33:44Ryan Hawk?

  Let's talk about something that a lot of people claim to hate and not want to do, yet we all do it every day and it's worth it to get good at it. And that is small talk. And I want to talk about your mother-in-law because you've said that she's really, really good at this and she has three words that she uses to help her be good at this. Again, I've said it in the past, hey, that's dumb. Let's just go deep real fast. I don't need small talk, but then I realized I'm having small talk all the time. I should get good at this. I should try to get better at small talk. So it's worth it. So how do we get better at small talk? And what makes your mother-in-law so good at it?

• 34:20Speaker 07

  Excellent. So small talk is critical. Small talk leads to big things. It has a bad rap and I think we need to rebrand small talk. I challenge everybody to think about their friendship network, their true friendship, not their social media friends. I bet everybody in their friendship network has at least one person that's a friend as a result of some kind of small talk that they had. It is just a way that we do it. It is a way that leads to deeper conversations. The challenge is most of us, one, feel very awkward in it because we don't know how to start it and we don't know how to end it. I had a woman on my show, Think Fast, Talk Smart, Rachel Greenwald. She's fascinating. She's an academic and she helps people form relationships. The goal is to be interested, not interesting. And that means asking questions.

• 35:05Speaker 07

  The secret to small talk is asking questions and then giving space for answers. And that's where my mother-in-law was amazing. Three simple words, tell me more. Tell me more. So you ask a question and the person answers and then you say, tell me more about that from a genuine place. It has to be authentic. So my wife is from the Midwest. I live out here in California. I am not kidding. When my mother-in-law would come visit, she would come off the plane with two or three new friends, people she did not know. And when I say new friends, I don't mean like she got their names. They would go out. They would go for coffee after she arrived to visit us. And it was because of this connection and genuine interest.

• 35:48Speaker 07

  So we start by observation, asking questions. And then the best way to get out, I love this, Rachel taught me this. She calls it the white flag, not for surrender, but in auto racing, you wave the white flag right before you end the race. It's the last lap, the white flag goes out. Do the same in your small talk. Most of us end small talk by relying on biology. We say, I have to go to the bathroom. I need more food. I need something to drink. I did that once with somebody. I said, oh, thanks. This has been great. I got to go to the bathroom. And he's like, yeah, me too. And then we had a much more awkward conversation in a bad location. But what you do is you say, I might say, hey, hey, Ryan, this has been a great conversation. In a minute, I'm going to go over there and talk. But before we go, I want to hear a little bit more about your trip to Tennessee. Do you see what I just did there?

• 36:32Speaker 07

  I signaled this is going to end in just a few minutes. So you're prepared, I'm prepared. But I come back with one more question that I'm generally interested in. After you give me some information, hey, oh, that's great. I hope to visit Tennessee someday too. And we separate. So knowing how to start, knowing how to end takes a lot of the pressure off and then you can just enjoy.

• 36:50Ryan Hawk?

  Oh, daily reflection journal. This whole thing went out a few months ago that the great leaders of our history didn't reflect. They just always pushed forward and it's so annoying when you see that because it's just nonsense. I'm not black and white on many things, but this is one of them that I am. I think the idea that, that great leaders don't reflect, it just couldn't be further from the truth. The best ones I've talked to over the past 11 and a half years, 700 of these things, they reflect all the time. You have to, to try to figure out what's going well, what's not, what you could do better. You want to remember what happened during the day. So you got to document those things. So can you walk me through your daily reflection process?

• 37:29Speaker 07

  Yeah, so I've, I've journaled for as long as I can remember. And what I do every night before I go to bed is part of my journaling. I do a lot of stuff. I will write down one thing that went really well in my communication and one thing that I didn't think went well or went poorly. And every Sunday, I spend about five minutes going back over the list for the week and I make a plan and the plan's job is to reinforce the things that went well and to work on something. So this week I am working on paraphrasing. I have noticed last week, given circumstances I was in, I was interrupting people a lot. I was asserting my position more than I felt was comfortable.

• 38:10Speaker 07

  And so what I'm doing now is I'm paraphrasing before I assert my position. So I'm saying, I heard you and then adding my value. I'm not doing it in every conversation and everything, but that's my task for the week. And this coming Sunday, I'll assess how I did on that. So I'm not saying I'm a great communicator, but I am absolutely a better communicator for having done this reflective process.

• 38:32Ryan Hawk?

  So one thing that you've done well at the end of each day, how does knowing that those prompts are coming, how does that work as a forcing function for you?

• 38:40Speaker 07

  That's really interesting that you ask that because when I first started doing this many, many years ago, it really was, I was like, oh, this is it. That's going to be it. This is going to be my good thing for the day. And then I could relax. Now I don't really even think about it. I really don't. And for me, it is genuine reflection where I have to actually sit back and say, yeah, let me think about that. Where was something, you know, so it used to be front of my brain. Now it's something I just do at the end of the day. And I think that's better for me. I would hate for somebody to be so locked into, is this the good thing? Is this the bad thing? So I just, at the end of the day, I just, I go back and reflect, which I enjoy, actually. I am somebody who's very future oriented and I'm really trying to savor more. And this reflection process helps me savor those really good moments in conversation and

• 39:25Speaker 07

  highlights how I should do other things so I can have more of those good moments.

• 39:29Ryan Hawk?

  Do you look back years and years at old journals and say, oh, wow, I forgot, like, that was a really good thing? Or, oh, hey, you know, I messed that up five years ago.

• 39:38Speaker 07

  Yeah. So I have, as part of my practice, there are certain key milestones every year that where I will dedicate time to go back to journals and different things I've done. So anniversaries, both positive and negative, New Year's. So it's not every day, but I definitely go back and review my journals. And I'm old school. I write in pen, in a book, you know, I have a whole closet full of these over the years. But yeah, no, I enjoy it. Actually, it's like being Indiana Jones into my own life.

• 40:04Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah, exactly. Okay. There's structures and frameworks, tools. One of them, I want you to go deeper on what, so what, now what, what, so what, now what? Why is this the Swiss Army knife of structures?

• 40:21Speaker 07

  I love your deep voice saying what's the what, now what? And at some point, I'll be curious why you picked that one over others, but this is my favorite structure. So let me take a step back. Many of us, when we communicate, we take our audiences on a journey of our own discovery of what we want to say while we're saying it. In other words, we just, we say too much. We list, we itemize, we just ramble. Our brains aren't wired to remember information that's listy or rambly. It's really hard for us. So we tend to tune out or we tend to make assumptions and that's not good. The ultimate goal of messaging is the F word, not the naughty one, but fidelity, accuracy and clarity. I want you to understand what I'm trying to say accurately. And if I just ramble and list things off, I'm working against myself. I'm

• 41:06Speaker 07

  introducing noise. So structure, cognitive neuroscientists have shown, actually help us increase fidelity and remember things better, up to 40% better. Structured information is remembered 40% better at least. So a structure is nothing more than a logical connection of ideas. I already mentioned problem, solution, benefit. That's a logical structure. There's an issue, challenge in the world, we solve it in this way and you benefit. What, so what, now what is another structure. It is a structure that works really well for updating, informing, teaching, educating. The what is the idea you're getting across. It's the information. It could be your position, your product, whatever it is. The so what is why it's important and

• 41:47Speaker 07

  relevant to the person that you're speaking to. And then the now what is what comes next? Let's have another meeting, sign the contract on the dotted line, ask me what questions you have. What, so what, now what? So I'll give you a quick example. You're in a meeting and you have to give an update. The update is your what? That's what I've done. The so what is, here's why it's important to our KPIs and goals. And then now what is the next steps I'm going to take and the contingencies in the way. Very simple. When you write an email, the subject line becomes the now what? That's what you want somebody to do. The body of the email is the what and the so what? So it becomes an easy way to compartmentalize information. So you package it up concisely and the audience receives it well and they can then cascade it with high fidelity. Because if you think about it, the job of most leaders

• 42:32Speaker 07

  is not just to communicate, it's to communicate a message that others can repeat in a high fidelity way. And when you structure it well, it helps.

• 42:42Ryan Hawk?

  We all, not all of us, because it doesn't like you do, but I use filler words. It bothers me. I tell my editor to take them out of this podcast at times when I use the word like too much. I listen to raw cuts of my conversations in order to try to improve as a communicator. I think my background's in sports. I've watched game film and practice film of every single rep ever. I try to take the same approach to this. With that said, you've gotten better at this. You're good at this. Breathing to kill filler words sounds a lot easier than it actually is to do it. What does that mean?

• 43:16Speaker 07

  Absolutely. And awareness is the first step. And I love that you listen. One of the only tools to really help you accelerate your presence and your nonverbal communication is to watch and listen to yourself. It is awful to do. It is so hard. But I tell my students who I make watch and listen to their stuff in my class, it's like going to the dentist. Most people don't enjoy going to the dentist, but everybody's glad they went. Watch and record yourself. So the fact that you do that, Ryan, awesome. Filler words, first and foremost, having some is normal and natural. And I actually believe in a world of AI where everything can be perfect and polished, having a few disfluencies and repetitive words actually makes you more human. Because we have this authenticity crisis where I don't know if what you're saying is

• 44:00Speaker 07

  yours originally, or you've got an earbud in and somebody's reciting it in your ear. I don't know, right? So when you sound human by having a few of these verbal foibles, you're okay. But the problem is for many of us, we do too many and it gets annoying. So to get to the breathing technique, let me have you do this with me. On the count of three, let's both say um together while exhaling. Ready? One, two, three. Um, very good. Now I want you to try to say um while inhaling and see how hard it is. Ready? One, two, three. You can't do it. You can't speak while inhaling. Speaking is an exit only event. You have to be pushing air out. And here's the trick. The ums and filler words and likes and all

• 44:42Speaker 07

  of that that bother us the most are the ones that come in silence. So when I'm done speaking, um, and then I start speaking again, that sits out there because there's nothing else going on. So if we train ourselves to end every sentence and every phrase out of breath, what must I do before I start speaking again? I have to inhale. And you just demonstrated, you can't say um, you can't say like, in fact, you can't say anything. You build in a pause and pauses are good in communication. So this is hard because all of us have been breathing the way we breathe when we speak since we've been born or since we've started speaking around the age of one. So we need to retrain ourselves. How do you do it? You read out

• 45:23Speaker 07

  loud lists. Because a list, at the end of every point of a list, just practice being out of breath. So I might bring up my calendar for the day. I mean, I bring up my calendar 100 times a day. I will read one or two times a day what I have out loud and then I just speak and land my phrase at the end of each one. So if you practice that for a week and begin to develop that, you will reduce the filler words you have that come between sentences because you're training yourself to end on a complete exhalation. And then you start speaking again and no filler word will fit in that spot.

• 46:00Ryan Hawk?

  Do you record your own audiobooks?

• 46:04Speaker 07

  I do. So my latest book, Think Faster, Talk Smarter, one of the hardest things I've ever done because I am not good as a scripted person. I am much better spontaneously, which is what the book is about, spontaneous communication. And there's somebody in your ear who's reading along with you. And because of the ADA rules, American with Disabilities Act, I have to read it exactly as it's written. And I'll skip over a word or I'll mispronounce something. It's hard.

• 46:31Ryan Hawk?

  With that said, I think it can help you because there are no filler words. You are getting a lot of repeti-- I agree with you. I've done it four times and they are usually three or four days each book and they're brutal days. But I feel like that practice

• 46:52Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 46:52Ryan Hawk?

  has helped me as a communicator.

• 46:54Speaker 07

  Yeah, I agree. And in fact, I encourage people to read out loud for many reasons. One is for filler words and awareness. But also because the words are on the page, you begin to be able to play with things because you don't have to think of the words to say. You're also building what I call vocal stamina. Now, you speak a lot, but most leaders aren't used to speaking for long periods of time. Very few people listening and watching this would wake up one morning and say, I want to run a marathon and just go run. No, they'd train first. If you want to run a marathon, you got to train. Reading out loud is like running on a treadmill. It's a proxy to train yourself to build that vocal stamina, to understand your breath work, to understand pauses and filler words. So it's really helpful and I encourage everybody to read out loud.

• 47:39Speaker 07

  It doesn't matter to me what you read, just read out loud. Reading your book is great.

• 47:44Ryan Hawk?

  Couple of things before we go. Costco credibility, okay? There's, there's different types of credibility. I love Costco, so I love their whole story, everything they're all about. So the difference between LinkedIn and resume versus Costco credibility, what is this?

• 47:59Speaker 07

  So credibility is really important. In today's world, it's critically important. I distinguish between career and college credibility and Costco credibility. Career and college is your background, what you've done. It's what goes on LinkedIn, it's what goes on a resume. It's important, it's important. That background is important. It definitely gives you some credibility. But when you go to Costco, you and many of those listening and when I go, they give free samples away. Why do they give free samples away? Why, you try it, you go, that's really good, I want to buy it. You have an experience of it. They're showing you their value. Many of us get locked into demonstrating our competence by listing all the credentials that we have.

• 48:41Speaker 07

  Show people, tell them stories, give them examples, leverage testimonials. That demonstrates your credibility versus telling people. Now ultimately, you want to blend the both. But many people overindex on what I call college and career credibility. So think about ways you can show your credibility. What stories can you tell? What accolades can you highlight? What testimonials can you leverage? That's what I mean by Costco credibility.

• 49:08Ryan Hawk?

  What was the word you used to describe me before we started recording again?

• 49:12Speaker 07

  So you have a lovely voice. I'm, I'm very voice sensitive. Maleficuous, it just means a deep resonant voice. I can listen to, to your voice and people with deep resonant voice, men and women. I just, I really like voices. My father had an amazing deep voice. My father, I can only remember him ever yelling at my brother and me once. He just had such a deep voice that he didn't have to yell. He would just say, stop, and the world would stop. You know, a James Earl Jones-like voice, really.

• 49:42Ryan Hawk?

  Awesome. One more question before we run, Matt. This is called a champagne question. You probably heard me ask it if you listen to the show. That is, fast forward exactly one year from today, you're surrounded by the people you love and you're popping bottles, spraying all over each other, celebrating like crazy. What are you celebrating?

• 50:00Speaker 07

  I am celebrating with the people who mean the most to me, the impact that the work I have had and the hard work others have done to really bring forward the importance of communication and having people be more confident, clear and compelling in what they do. It is a great joy to me to see people communicate well. I happen to believe that our world needs to hear everybody's voice and you need to be able to communicate clearly to do that. So I am celebrating whenever anybody feels good and confident in their communication.

• 50:32Ryan Hawk?

  How do you know when you've achieved that? Do you just get daily emails from people? You hear from students, all of the above? Like, how do you know?

• 50:39Speaker 07

  So I have the good fortune of people share with me the value they've taken from my work or derivatives thereof. So yeah, I, I, you, you put a podcast out in the world. You know, I do the same thing. And I'll get an email from a place where I have to go to Google and say, where is that place? And somebody will say, I listened to an episode and I feel like it helped me get my job or it helped me resolve this conflict I had with this. That to me warms my heart. You know, more than probably anybody, how hard it is to do podcasts and write books. But when you hear the value that it provides to somebody, that, that's, it, it means the world to me.

• 51:13Ryan Hawk?

  It's the juice, man. I tell you, every time, it never, ever, ever gets old, no matter how many times, in person, email, text, whatever, to feel like you're making a positive impact in somebody's life. I don't know, man, it's everything. It really is the gas that fuels me up. I'm sure it fuels you up to keep going, especially, especially on those days when you're tired, it gets hard, you got a million things going on, you got life plus work. That is fuel. So yeah, I think we share that. Think faster, talk smarter. Matt, you're, you're seriously a guy that I would love to regularly have conversations with, both with microphones and maybe without, because I love your aura, the what you bring to conversations, not just this one, which has been awesome, but other ones I've watched.

• 51:58Ryan Hawk?

  I've been a fan of your work and it's been cool to get a chance to have this conversation with you. So thank you so much for being here.

• 52:05Speaker 07

  Well, thank you for the kind compliments and for the insightful questions. And I would absolutely be up for conversations with mics, without mics, with beers, out in the wild, whatever.

• 52:16Ryan Hawk?

  Love it, man. Do you ever come back to the Midwest or, well, I mean,

• 52:18Speaker 07

  I, yeah, absolutely. We, we still have family. I'm in the, I'm in the Midwest at least a couple of times a year.

• 52:23Ryan Hawk?

  Love it, love it. All right. Well, where would you send listeners to learn more about you online?

• 52:28Speaker 07

  Thank you. I'd love everybody to go to faster, smarter.io. That's where you'll learn a lot about the podcast thing, Fast, Talk, Smart. You can always check out mattabrahams.com for lots of resources and other things too. Thank you.

• 52:39Ryan Hawk?

  Thanks so much, man. As I said, we're going to continue this dialogue as we both progress. I really appreciate it.

• 52:43Speaker 07

  Thank you, enjoy.

• 52:48Ryan Hawk?

  It is the end of the Podcast Club. Thank you for being a member of the End of the Podcast Club. If you are, send me a note, [email protected]. Let me know what you learned from this great conversation with Matt Abrahams. A few takeaways from my notes. Start your next talk or meeting like an action movie. Cut the credentials and the agenda opening lead with a provocative question, a surprising stat or a story that shows the audience what's in it for them within the first 30 seconds. Earn their attention by delivering value, not by doing some random introduction of yourself. Next, to be interesting, be interested.

• 53:31Ryan Hawk?

  This is something we've talked about a lot over the years on this podcast. Use tell me more in your next conversation. This is the simplest small talk upgrade there is. Ask a question, then genuinely follow up. Matt's mother-in-law uses these three words to connect deeply with people. And then know, feel, do. Before your next presentation, write down one sentence for each, what you want people to know, how you want them to feel and what you want them to do. And then build the talk from there. Once again, I want to say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode of the Learning Leader Show with Matt Abrahams.

• 54:16Ryan Hawk?

  I think he'll help you become a more effective leader because you continue to do that. And you also go to Spotify and Apple Podcasts and you subscribe to the show. You're rated hopefully five stars. You write a thoughtful review by doing all of that. You are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk to you soon. Can't wait.