293. 5 Leadership Lessons From Stanford: Me2We 2026

What it takes to lead as a communicator and communicate as a leader. Leadership isn’t just about making decisions — it’s about how you communicate them. As Matt Abrahams puts it, “Communication is operationalized leadership.” At a recent Me2We event, in connection with Stanford GSB's Executive Education LEAD program, Abrahams held a live discussion with four of the podcast’s most popular guests: Celine Teoh https://www.fastersmarter.io/guests/celine-teoh/, facilitator of the GSB’s famous Interpersonal Dynamics course; Huggy Rao https://www.fastersmarter.io/guests/huggy-rao/, organizational behavior professor and co-author of The Friction Project https://www.fastersmarter.io/thefrictionproject/; legendary Stanford basketball coach Tara VanDerveer https://www.fastersmarter.io/guests/tara-vanderveer/; and Dave Dodson https://www.fastersmarter.io/guests/david-dodson/, lecturer and author of The Manager's Handbook http://fastersmarter.io/the-manager-s-handbook. In this special live episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart https://www.fastersmarter.io/, the panel shares frameworks and lessons for leading and communicating more effectively. From Teoh’s five A’s for inviting dissent to Rao’s warning against “jargon monoxide,” from VanDerveer’s relationship-first approach to Dodson’s case for leading like a teacher, this conversation explores what it takes to communicate as a leader — and lead as a communicator. Episode Reference Links: Celine Teoh https://www.fastersmarter.io/guests/celine-teoh/Tara VanDerveer https://www.fastersmarter.io/guests/tara-vanderveer/Huggy Rao https://www.fastersmarter.io/guests/huggy-rao/Huggy’s Book: The Friction Project https://www.fastersmarter.io/thefrictionproject/David Dodson https://www.fastersmarter.io/guests/david-dodson/David’s Book: The Manager’s Handbook http://fastersmarter.io/the-manager-s-handbookEp.194 Live Lessons in Levity and Leadership: Me2We 2025 Part 1 https://www.fastersmarter.io/194-live-lessons-in-levity-and-leadership-me2we-2025-part-1/ Connect: Premium Signup >>>> Think Fast Talk Smart Premium https://www.fastersmarter.io/premium/Email Questions & Feedback >>> [email protected] Transcripts >>>Think Fast Talk Smart Website https://www.fastersmarter.io/293-the-leadership-skills-well-need-most-when-everything-is-changing-me2we-2026/Newsletter Signup + English Language Learning >>>FasterSmarter.io http://fastersmarter.io/Think Fast Talk Smart >>>LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/think-fast-talk-smart/,Instagram https://www.instagram.com/thinkfasttalksmart/, YouTube https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6caGRBUYZCmgDGM2RK6mxKB9jG_ccmm3Matt Abrahams >>>LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/maabrahams/ https://learning.fastersmarter.io/?redirect_from=podpageChapters:

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

• 0:00Matt Abrahams?

  It is now my distinct pleasure to host for you a live version of Think Fast, Talk Smart. We have a panel of four amazing GSB faculty and lecturers and, an added bonus, a coach from the athletics department. Let's give a big round of applause to our guests.

• 0:25Matt Abrahams?

  Communication is operationalized leadership. The best leaders communicate clearly and consistently. My name is Matt Abrahams and I teach strategic communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to this special episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast, recorded live as part of Me2We, which is an on-campus component of Stanford GSB's Executive Education Lead Program. In front of over 500 people, I have the honor and privilege to host four of our most popular guests in a thoughtful discussion of practical ideas and tools we can all use to become better leaders and communicators.

• 1:10Matt Abrahams?

  We have Celine Teo, Huggy Rao, Tara Vandavere, and Dave Dodson. And for all of you, these are our leaders.

• 1:23Matt Abrahams?

  First, thank you all for being here. I'm excited to have our conversation. We'll start with Celine. Celine is a facilitator for the GSB's very famous class, Interpersonal Dynamics, better known as Touchy Feely. She is a coach and a lecturer in effective team leadership and a GSB graduate. So, Celine, it's really nice to see you again. Celine and I will sometimes go for the walks in the foothills. It's a little different in this format here. As everyone here well knows, Our world has become a bit more divisive and conversations can tend to be a little more conflictual.

• 2:02Matt Abrahams?

  What advice do you have for leaders to encourage differences of opinions while trying to minimize the angst and conflict that can result?

• 2:10Speaker 01

  I'm going to approach it from an interpersonal dynamics point of view. And as a leader, if you want to encourage dissent, one of the first things you have to do is ask for it. I'm going to give you a framework. It's the five As. You have to ask for it. Hey, what does everybody think? Does anybody have a different point of view? You have to acknowledge it. Oh, thank you for telling me that you think that this initiative might actually reduce our budget and make us unable to meet our other goals. Appreciate it. I really enjoy that you told me this. Thank you so much. Fourth is act on it as much as possible. Act on it, right?

• 2:53Speaker 01

  Put your money where your mouth is. Let's actually do an analysis to find out if there is enough money to hit these goals. And then amplify it. Oh, Matt told me this thing. I really appreciate that. He told me this thing that I might initially have disagreed with. Because when you do something like that, you actually create safety for people to dissent with you. And then you ask a question around how do you minimize conflict when the dissent does happen? And I would say don't focus on the conflict itself. Actually build the human relationship before that. So, ask for it.

• 3:28Matt Abrahams?

  Ask.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  Acknowledge it.

• 3:30Matt Abrahams?

  Acknowledge.

• 3:31Speaker 01

  Appreciate.

• 3:32Matt Abrahams?

  Appreciate.

• 3:33Speaker 01

  Act on it as much as you can and then amplify it.

• 3:38Matt Abrahams?

  Okay, excellent. Very good. The five. And notice what I noticed is agree was not part of that.

• 3:42Speaker 01

  No.

• 3:43Matt Abrahams?

  You're not mandated to agree. So there isn't a six A. It's just to acknowledge and understand. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Well, sitting next to Celine is Huggy Rao. Many of you know Huggy. Huggy is a professor in organizational behavior and he teaches a lot of popular classes, including People Operations from Startup to Scale Up. And Huggy has written several books, but his most recent with Bob Sutton, who also teaches at Stanford, is The Friction Project, how smart leaders make the right things easier and the wrong things harder. So, Huggy, when we last spoke, your book had just come out, The Friction Project has just come out. It's been a while now. Can you share with all of us some things you learned when you were bringing that book to the world? And what was most well-received?

• 4:26Matt Abrahams?

  Is there something that really helped people that you could share with us that could help all of us?

• 4:31Speaker 02

  The idea or principle that had maximum impact was what Bob and I refer to as the addition bias, the relentless tendency of leaders, managers, and executives to constantly add. Let me narrate a simple experiment. So this was actually a series of 20 experiments. So in the first experiment, they ask people, "Hey, you've got to build a spaceship with Lego building blocks. Do you want five of them or do you want 15 of them? What do you think most people choose? 15. Arguably, it's way more complex to build a spaceship with 15 blocks as opposed to five. In the second experimental task, they ask people,

• 5:15Speaker 02

  "Please plan a vacation." And predictably, they add more cities to the vacation. And the consequence is they feel they need to have a vacation from a vacation. And we're sitting in a university, and that was the last of the 20 experiments. "Please help us reform a university." Eighty-nine percent of the suggestions had to do with addition. What's the consequence of addition?

• 5:45Speaker 02

  I could go on about how it destroys willpower and so forth. Let me give you two quotes that have always stood with me. One young woman with a tear in her eye told me, "I just feel I can never be enough at work."

• 6:02Speaker 02

  And that is extraordinarily troubling. Another young person said, "Professor, when I go home, I only have the scraps of myself for my family." And that is tragic. And American organizations psychologize this and say, "Oh, my God, they have a work-life balance issue. Let's give them a meditation app."

• 6:28Speaker 02

  You know, the real problem is the lousy way in which work is designed. So the big takeaway from all of that is, the implication for all of you as leaders is to be editors in chief. What does the editor in chief of a movie or a newspaper do? They take out things that bore, bewilder, distract, and exhaust people. In short, you need to relentlessly subtract. And a good place to start is, start with a campaign to get rid of stupid [BLEEP]. That's like a simple place to start.

• 7:05Matt Abrahams?

  Thank you, Huggie, very much. Sitting next to Huggie is Tara VanDerveer. I am thrilled and honored that you decided to join us today. Thank you.

• 7:13Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 7:15Matt Abrahams?

  Tara served as Stanford's head women's basketball coach for 38 years. Under her leadership, Tara led Stanford to three national championships. She also coached, yes, of course. She also coached the U.S. national team to Olympic gold in 1996. I've had the good fortune to get to know Tara over the last year or so. Tara is very interested in learning and bringing learning to the student athletes here on campus and to the coaches as well. You've been super busy since you retired. I think maybe more busy than when you coached.

• 7:56Matt Abrahams?

  And Tara not only helps coach coaches, but she coaches leaders as well. What do you find is one thing that you think is most helpful to the people now that you're coaching?

• 8:06Speaker 03

  The one thing, I guess, I want to communicate with the young people I work with, whether it's the players or the coaches that I work with, or now it's the other coaches of other teams, is just, you know, whenever I went to the gym, I never felt like it was a J O B job. I loved going to the gym. I loved being around the players that I worked with. And I always wanted to help them be better. And one of the things I did as an adult, does anyone play the piano here? Like, it is so hard, but I wanted to learn as an adult. And I tried to teach myself for two weeks and it was like hopeless. And so I went out and I got the best piano teacher. I mean, she was a, she's just phenomenal. And within the first year, I was making CDs and then other CDs.

• 8:50Speaker 03

  And people said to me, wow, Tara, you know, you're really good. I said, no, I have a great teacher. And what I took from that, and I hope to use with my coaching, is I always want to help people get to somewhere they can't get by themselves. You know, so it's lifting them up and being positive and being encouraging and helping them be the best they can be. So I think that that's the thing I try to encourage, whether it's the players or coaches or people that I have a chance to meet is, you know, be someone that makes it better. Be someone that makes a difference.

• 9:22Matt Abrahams?

  David, this is David Dodson. Dave is a lecturer in management. He's also an alum. He teaches managing growing enterprises, among his many other classes. And his latest book is The Manager's Handbook: Five Simple Steps to Build a Team, Stay Focused, Make Better Decisions, and Crush Your Competition. Dave, when you were on the podcast before, it was a masterclass in how to lead and how to really be a better manager. Since we last met, it feels like so much has changed in the world. We met before the AI revolution and other things. If you were to update your manager's handbook today based on the challenges leaders are facing, what one bit of advice would you add?

• 10:03Speaker 04

  I've actually, I've thought about that a lot. I don't see how two things can coexist right now, which is that AI has all of the description and promise and there won't be a lot of job disruption. I know some people say that's not the case, but I don't believe that. And the reason I don't believe that is because AI is by definition doing things that people did or people do now.

• 10:28Speaker 04

  That's going to lead to disruption. I didn't necessarily say it's going to be bad. I have no idea how it's going to turn out. Anyone who says they know are fooling themselves. But I do know there's going to be disruption. And Warren Buffett has that great expression. I assume he coined it, but you know, when the tide comes down, you see the rocks. I think that's what's going to happen is I think the tide is going to come down because the whole idea or the whole sweepstakes of who's a winner and who's a loser is going to be turned on its head. And you're not going to win because you have better technology. I mean, Matt, when I was here 45 years ago, I was programming in Fortran and I could figure out how to draw a Christmas tree and a dot matrix printer, right?

• 11:13Speaker 04

  And then I haven't programmed since. Everyone here can program now. We're all programmers now. So technology is becoming less and less important. And what's ended up happening is running things well is going to become more and more important because you can't cover it up. And I don't think there's ever going to be a more important time than to go back to the fundamentals of how do you build a team? What are the sub skills of building a team? How do you go get advice? How do you measure quality? And so all those fundamentals, I think, are going to rise because the technology advantage is going to come down and there's going to be a lot of disruption.

• 11:50Matt Abrahams?

  We'll be right back to finish our conversation. But first, a quick word from one of our sponsors. Their support allows us to bring you this show free of charge. One of my favorite things about this show is hearing from listeners all over the world. Communication connects us. And the more people you can communicate with, the bigger your world becomes. That's one reason I've been thinking more and more about language learning. What I appreciate about Babbel is that it focuses on helping you have real conversations with real people, not just memorized vocabulary. Their lessons are designed by more than 200 language experts and built around practical communication skills you can actually use in everyday life.

• 12:31Matt Abrahams?

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• 13:17Matt Abrahams?

  Well, thank you to all of you. It was nice to hear your voices and your input. The theme of this year's Me To We is leadership. And I'd like to ask each of you to share one of the best bits of leadership advice you've learned or experienced in your careers that you think would benefit those folks in the room. Dave, since we just heard from you, let's have you start again. What's one of the best bits of advice?

• 13:38Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 13:40Speaker 04

  Before, so my career after I got out of business school was I worked here at the business school and then I went out and bought a small company. And that small company, the largest investor was TA Associates, which was very small at the time. Now they're huge. So I got access to the guy who was running the whole place, Kevin Landry, he's since passed away. And he told me this, he said, you're about, the hardest step that you make is not becoming a manager. Because once you become a manager and you've got three or four people reporting to you, you can kind of do their work on the weekends. You can cover up for them or whatever. The hard thing is when you become a manager of managers, because then you can't cheat basically the system anymore. And he said, that's what we're going to see whether you can do or not. And so, as a result of that,

• 14:23Speaker 04

  I've sort of, over time, evolved to the comparison between being a leader and being a teacher. And it's not because I teach at the business school. It's in a different context. Is that the best leaders are the ones that are focused on teaching and developing talent and not doing. So that would be the, you know, the single nugget that I wanted to share.

• 14:45Matt Abrahams?

  Yeah, thank you for that. And one of the hardest lessons I had ever had to learn when I was an operator was exactly that. Because I wanted everybody to like me, so I did all the work myself and I didn't take that step back. So Tara, let's move to you. What's some advice that you would share here about good leadership? Leadership that you've learned.

• 15:01Speaker 03

  This might sound a little backwards, but I was a head coach before I was at Stanford. And I was in a situation where, you know, we had a championship team, we had great recruits, we had, I had a great staff, but I didn't feel appreciated from maybe the leadership of the athletic department. And so I kind of started looking around and then I got recruited by Stanford. And so I, you know, took the job at Stanford and then, you know, we, we've had great success at Stanford and Stanford at the time was not a very good program. But I think more than anything, I learned that as a leader, as the head coach, as a,

• 15:43Speaker 03

  you know, whether it's, you know, I wanted to be a great teacher, but I wanted to make sure that the people I worked with felt appreciated because I made a change because I didn't. And a lot of people, I think, change their jobs, not because they don't like the job, but because they don't like who they're working for. And they don't feel the respect or they don't feel the, you know, part of the process that they want to feel. And I felt it. And so I want to make sure that the people that I work with, my assistant coaches, my staff, feel appreciated.

• 16:12Matt Abrahams?

  Excellent. Thank you. Take the time to appreciate. Very good. Huggy, how about some leadership advice you've experienced or you'd like to pass on?

• 16:21Speaker 02

  The advice Augustus Caesar, the great Roman emperor, would give to his generals? He would always tell them he expanded the Roman Empire significantly. So he would always tell his generals, "Make haste slowly." And that's been worked and reworked. And I'm sure, as you know, John Wooden has his version and so on. But for me, it dates back to Augustus Caesar. And I think it, you know, the great danger with speed is good people can do very bad things very quickly. And that's the problem with speed. One quick study. I asked my PhD student. Here's a bunch of Bay Area startups.

• 17:06Speaker 02

  Use a large language model to comb through all their strategy documents. Tell me how much do they linguistically emphasize speed? She came up with a number. I said, "Tell me what's the relationship between this linguistic emphasis on speed and the time taken to become a unicorn?" And she was excited and she said, "Oh, my God. The more they talked about speed, the faster they became a unicorn." I said, "Wait a minute. I sit conditional on the first stage, do a second-stage analysis, and tell me the relationship between the time taken to become a unicorn and the probability of lawsuits two years down the line?" What did she find? Faster you became a unicorn, you got barraged with lawsuits. So to me,

• 17:51Speaker 02

  the most important thing, I think, is to create for all of you as leaders cognitive speed bumps to slow your people down. Because if you don't do that, they're going to, of course, Russian and make mistakes and also do many, many things. Many bad things. So a simple technique is to always say, "What would we do if we had half the resources we have? What would we do if we have quarter the resources we have?" And just a thought experiment slows you down.

• 18:26Matt Abrahams?

  Excellent. Thank you very much. Slow things down and build in some friction to help.

• 18:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, good friction.

• 18:32Matt Abrahams?

  Good friction. Excellent. Celine, how about you? What's some leadership advice you have for folks in the room?

• 18:38Speaker 01

  So I actually went out and asked my coachees this. So I'm going to pass on to you wisdom from all of these leaders of fairly large and successful organizations. And surprisingly, or maybe not so surprisingly, every single one of them had the same advice, which was, "Listen more." And that's because, as you all know, everybody in here is a leader. The more senior you get, the taller, funnier, better-looking you become.

• 19:13Speaker 01

  Nobody wants to say no to you. Nobody wants to tell you bad news. You stop hearing the stuff you need to hear in order to make good decisions. And so, answer to the first question, ask, and then do what one of these leaders is actually doing. He's having the situation where he's retiring, and he's grooming the successor. And the successor, he noticed, like, jumps in and states her opinion right away, the instant she gets into the meeting. And what that does is that narrows the conversation. Suddenly, everybody's just supporting her perspective. And so, what the advice that he gave her was, be the last one to speak. Let the junior people speak first,

• 19:57Speaker 01

  and then don't shoot them down. But let them all speak first, and then you'll suddenly hear a diversity of opinions. And then, when they speak, listen very hard. Because when they say, hmm, Celine, perhaps that might not possibly be the best idea on the table. What they really mean is, Celine, that idea sucks.

• 20:19Matt Abrahams?

  If you enjoyed my recent conversation with Jeanne and Cherie from the Tiger Sisters, I think you'll really love their show. Jeanne and Cherie are known as the internet's Wall Street and Silicon Valley Big Sisters. And together, they've built Tiger Sisters into a top-ranked business podcast, reaching number one in business and top three overall in Spotify in the US. They take big and sometimes complicated ideas around money, power, and love, and turn them into clear, practical tools you can apply right away. Two fun facts. I coached Cherie for her TEDx talk, and I had the chance to join them on their show. And I have to say, it was a really thoughtful and engaging conversation. They ask great questions and bring a perspective you don't always hear. New episodes drop every Monday on their YouTube channel and across all audio platforms

• 21:04Matt Abrahams?

  at Tiger Sisters Podcast. And I'd love just very quickly to hear from some of you before I get to our final question. If you have thoughts on what helps improve communication. And Huggy, I'm going to pick on you because you told, you said something. I don't know that it's yours, but I've now attributed it to you. But you talked about jargon monoxide.

• 21:23Speaker 03

  I love that one.

• 21:23Matt Abrahams?

  Can you talk about how that suffocates communication?

• 21:29Speaker 02

  I think it kills communication.

• 21:31Matt Abrahams?

  Yes.

• 21:33Speaker 02

  We have a chapter in our book about jargon, monoxide, and that's using hugely complicated words and, you know, a language that frankly alienates people. So, in fact, the more abstractions you invoke, the more confused you leave people. Look at all the companies, they say integrity is a value. I get confused by that. What does that mean? Does it mean I tell you the truth even before you ask me? Or do I tell you the truth only when you ask me? And if I'm confused about that, I'm gonna say, "They don't have a clue. I'm not gonna worry about it." And there's actually a very interesting study

• 22:16Speaker 02

  that shows the more abstract and jargon-laden the language we use, people actually associate those words with the mouth. And when you use concrete words and language, people associate that with the hand. And so, every time you're talking to somebody, ask yourself, "What's the ratio of hand to mouth word?" And once you do that, you quickly realize, "I've gotta purge a lot of these mouth words, abstractions that simply signal you have mastered presumably something, but leave everybody mystified." And you don't have agreement then.

• 23:01Speaker 02

  You actually have... People actually sleepwalking to conclusions of which they're completely unaware of.

• 23:08Matt Abrahams?

  I need to get my foot out of my mouth most of the time. So maybe that leads me to more of my hands. Thank you. Tar, when you and I spoke, I was really fascinated by how you think about giving constructive feedback to your players. If you think about it, a coach's job is to coach and to give that feedback. In terms of your communication, when you're in a moment of giving feedback, can you share a little bit about how you approach that?

• 23:32Speaker 03

  I think feedback is coaching. Yeah. The very first person I coached was my sister Marie, who never practiced. My dad made me coach her team, and Marie never practiced. But I always knew that I had a great relationship with my sister. So the first thing I would start with when I'm communicating with someone on my team or coaching someone is the relationship that I have with them. So maybe a senior on the team who I know and know really well, I might be able to communicate in a different way than a freshman. So first, the communication is based on the relationship that you have with the person you're talking with or giving feedback. And then, no matter what, I would sandwich the communication with, you know, positive. If someone is not getting back on defense, I said, you know, I might say to them,

• 24:17Speaker 03

  "Wow, you're doing a great job on the offensive boards, but you're not sprinting back on defense. And, you know, we need you out there." So it would be, you know, positive of, you know, "You're doing a great job. Let's do this better." And then another great job. So I call it, you know, the sandwich approach to coaching. And after every game, we would give our team very specific written feedback of things you are doing well and then a thing you can do better. And just, you know, maybe some of it is not what you're saying, but how you're saying it to them. You know, I think of coaching and leading is, I think, is really similar in that, "How would you like to be coached?" And I talk to our assistant coaches of being the coach that you want to play for.

• 25:02Speaker 03

  You know, so be the boss, be the leader that you would like to learn from or work for. And a lot of that is not always what you say, but how you say it. And then, again, we all, you know, who wants to be screamed at? You know, I mean, really, who wants to be screamed at and yelled at? And, you know, in some ways, being broken down. And so I would never use that way of coaching.

• 25:25Matt Abrahams?

  So it's really taking the time to think about what's relevant and important for the person you're talking to and to remind them that you're here to also encourage them. It's not just giving them constructive feedback. Celine, I know that when you and I have talked, that you believe, and as do I, that it's important to prepare when you have significant and high-stakes communication. Do you have suggestions about how people can best prepare and think through communication that they have coming up?

• 25:54Speaker 01

  A lot of the advice around communication that I consume revolves around the form of it. But I think what's important to prepare is just knowing your audience. Sit there and actually get into their shoes, get into their personalities, get into their personas and really understand what is it they care about? What message will resonate with them? I think real empathy for your audience is where I would start.

• 26:25Matt Abrahams?

  Thank you. So Dave, in your book, it's full of good communication advice. Is there one thing that stands out to you that you would share that really helps with successful communication?

• 26:36Speaker 04

  Here would be the advice that is actually through a lot of the communication aspects of the book, which is that you start with having a framework. So Tara was talking about giving feedback and how we teach feedback is that it's there's six parts. I'm not going to go through the six parts, it's in the book, but that you learn these six parts because you have to ask them for, for example, if they're facing any obstacles, you have to be clear how you're measuring them, you have to be clear that you're giving them support. And if you learn those basics, those six steps, then, and it's all conversational in the end, then you give great feedback or, and you have it with the what.

• 27:18Matt Abrahams?

  So what?

• 27:19Speaker 04

  A what, which is fantastic feedback, fantastic framework. Another framework we have is when you're giving bad news. You say, a lot of people give bad news and they ramble on and go back and forth and nobody really knows what's happening and they're apologizing. Just do it like this, just say this, this is what happened, this is the implication, this is what I learned from it, this is what I'm doing differently going forward. Structure your communication like that. It'll be conversational, but have structure around it so that you cover that. So that's really done more for me than anything in terms of being able to communicate effectively.

• 27:52Matt Abrahams?

  Structure is so critical to it.

• 27:54Speaker 04

  It really is.

• 27:55Matt Abrahams?

  It helps you and it helps your audience. Thank you. So I'm going to ask one final question of each panelist and then we're going to open it up to all of you. So begin thinking about your questions. There'll be people Running around the audience with mics, so we'll get questions from all of you in just a few moments. So my final question, we'll focus directly on the leaders here. What is one skill or tool you would suggest our leaders consider, develop, or hone as they walk into 2026 and beyond? What's one skill? Tara, do you mind sharing one first?

• 28:23Speaker 03

  Again, this might sound a little odd, but I think you want to start with yourself and take care of yourself. You want to make sure that you're getting the sleep that you need, that you're getting the, you know, getting your exercise and doing things that are making you healthy. And then I think you're going to be a much better leader for people, that you feel really good about yourself. And, you know, that, you know, you're spending time, you can have a great job and you can work really hard, but you still have time for your friends and your family and your children and taking care of yourself. So I think it really, it starts with you and being able to look in the mirror every day, when most of you brush your teeth every day, I think.

• 29:06Speaker 03

  And, you know, be able to say, you know, today's going to be a great day and start with things that are going to make it a great day. And it starts with how you approach it, your attitude, and, you know, how you, how you put yourself together. And, you know, I work with so many people and a lot of young people that they're so distracted, they're on their phones for hours and hours and hours. And that's, I would also say that is get off your phones and take time for yourself.

• 29:32Matt Abrahams?

  Okay, so it starts with you first.

• 29:34Speaker 02

  Amen.

• 29:35Matt Abrahams?

  Yeah. Dave, how about something you would suggest?

• 29:39Speaker 04

  Might be a little less obvious, but it really builds on something Tara, you were just saying, which is make sure you have time to think. And I was thinking about, especially when you talk about being on the phones and so forth. I mean, we're just bombarded with stimulus. And Cal Newport wrote this great book called Deep Work, where he talks about how your brain needs to be in a certain environment in order to think creatively, in order to think creatively. And so my leadership advice would be Being able to do deep work and being able to think creatively and then creating an environment where the people that work for you also have that, instead of everybody just pounding through emails all day long and trying to multitask on Zoom. Just take time to think.

• 30:24Speaker 04

  That's where the big, you know, lightning flashes of brilliance come from.

• 30:28Matt Abrahams?

  So give yourself the time to think and set up that environment. Celine, how about you? What's one skill or idea you'd like folks to hone?

• 30:37Speaker 01

  I'm actually thinking about something you said, Huggy, which was, you know, the mouth and the hands. I think we should think about bringing the skill of bringing your head and your heart into work. Because in a realm of AI nowadays, what Dave was talking about, what is left to us when the AI is smarter, more logical, knows more than we do, if not our magnificent humanity? And that is our ability to feel, our team's ability to feel. And so I would say, learn to name your feelings, right? When you're, as Tara recommends, brushing your teeth in front of the mirror

• 31:19Speaker 01

  or washing your hands, then ask yourself, what's, what am I feeling right now? What's one sentence as to why? And then do that with your team. Ask your team, you know, a quick check-in at the beginning of the meeting. David Bradford actually recommended this as the highest ROI move he can think of. What's, how are you feeling right now? What's one feeling word? What's one sentence as to why? And then go around the, go around the table, takes five minutes, and then suddenly you realize, oh, you know, there's a lot of heavy stuff happening over here. There's a lot of light stuff happening over there. It's all in the room with you. Make use of that.

• 31:55Matt Abrahams?

  Huggy, how about you? What's one thing you would recommend that people consider?

• 31:58Speaker 02

  I'd be glad to do that, Matt. But before I do that, I really want to just double-click on what Tara and David just mentioned, and that is, time poverty always leads to thought poverty. You know, you don't have time, you're not going to have great thoughts, period, you know? So, one of the marching orders the boss of this afternoon, Matt, gave me was, I gotta tell you a story.

• 32:26Matt Abrahams?

  Absolutely.

• 32:27Speaker 02

  So, here's a story. I'm going to take you back to the grease of Homer.

• 32:34Speaker 02

  Many of you may recall Ulysses, who of course was described by Homer in his books. Anyway, this story is about Ulysses, and Ulysses has fought all of these battles, and he's tired, and he's trying to return home to meet his wife Penelope. And as the ship is sailing, there's actually a huge temptation close by, and that's the island of the sirens, mythical demigods, if you will, who sing haunting songs. And if you went to the island, you could get trapped. And Ulysses had a problem. He wanted to listen to the music but not get trapped,

• 33:18Speaker 02

  because otherwise he wouldn't be able to see Penelope. And the tactic that Ulysses, or tool that Ulysses relies on is, he tells his sailors, "Please tie me to a mast and stuff my mouth with cotton, because I cannot give you instructions to stop and stay here in this island. But leave my ears open so I can listen to the music." And then he tells the sailors, "You need to stuff your ears with wax, because you can't listen to the music lest you actually get trapped in that island." And this is actually a simple story,

• 34:03Speaker 02

  but for me, a very powerful one about weak will. I wish I was a resolute chooser, but I know I have weak will. And so the tool for all of you is to ask yourselves, "What's your mast?"

• 34:19Matt Abrahams?

  Understanding the failures can really teach a lot, as well as celebrating the wins. Thank you so much for being here. I want to thank the panel. Thank you for joining us for another episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. To hear the 2025 version of our live Meet-A-Wee event, please listen to episode 194. This episode was produced by Catherine Rees. Reid, Ryan Campos, and me, Matt Abrahams. Our music is from Floyd Wonder, with special thanks to Podium Podcast Company. Please find us on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. Be sure to subscribe and rate us. Also, follow us on LinkedIn, TikTok, and Instagram.

• 35:00Matt Abrahams?

  And check out FasterSmarter.io for deep dive videos, English language learning content, and our newsletter. Please consider joining our Think Fast, Talk Smart learning community at FasterSmarter.io/learning. You'll find video lessons, learning quests, discussion boards, an AI coach, and book club opportunities. Again, that's FasterSmarter.io/learning to become part of our Think Fast, Talk Smart learning community.