welcome to think fast talk smart a podcast designed to hone your communication skills my name is Matt Abrahams I'm a lecturer here at Stanford's Graduate School of Business where I teach strategic communication and I'll be inviting my colleagues and experts in to talk about best practices you can use to become a more confident authentic and compelling [Music] Communicator when we think about our communication at work we tend to focus on our presentations and meeting contributions that we know we should spend time preparing and practicing for but if you think about it most of our professional
communication is spontaneous in nature it's providing feedback in the moment answering questions introducing people these spur of the- moment communication events can be as important if not even more important than our planned high stakes Communications for most people these impromptu situations are quite challenging I am thrilled to invite two experts and good friends here here today to talk about how we can become more comfortable and confident in these spur of the- moment situations let me start by introducing Adam Tobin Adam's a senior lecturer in film and media studies here at Stanford University and he's a
teacher in continuing studies Dan Klein is also a lecturer at Stanford both at The Graduate School of Business as well as theater and performance studies and Dan also is an instructor at the D School Adam and Dan thanks for being here thank you thank you glad to be here we all are are involved with situations where the students we teach or the clients we coach uh feel challenged by spontaneous speaking can you share a little bit about where you think that challenge comes from why is this type of speaking so hard there's a moment when
we feel that the pressure is on it's like everyone's attention is on us and we have to perform and the moment we have that self-conscious awareness it's like our brain starts to Short Circuit we we we go into a different set of systems we're thinking about oursel we're think about how it looks how we did sometimes we see this in in with improvisers specifically there's another problem where if if the pressure is on and you think you did really well that also short circuits your ability to be present and in the moment and it's amazing
people can shut down or sometimes people can talk too much yeah or they can get you know their voice can get high or their voice low it's like their mind body is running away from them it's doing everything except kind of what they need to do in the moment but we are expert at that because for most of the time we're improvising you know nobody wakes up and writes the script of the day and everyone else goes along with that script we're actually experts at improvising it's just when we get put on the spot and
when Adam says we are experts he doesn't mean me and Adam he means like Humanity like we are experts we are exper that's true you are that's why you're here we just want to make sure everyone we all are experts and we see this in in in lots of high stake situations I think of athletes who who for years have been practicing what they do but in that high stake situation that pitch that putt where all of the sudden they they they fail or they struggle because of that over awareness that that you're talking about
you know before we start getting into specific tips and and tricks about how to manage in these situations I really think a lot of what you guys teach has to do with mindset and approach would you guys like to talk about that that approach that you take one of my favorite stories is that when I first moved to the Bay Area before GPS that's how ancient it was I would go to San Francisco and every time I would get lost every single time and it wasn't until the seventh or eighth time that I got lost
and I looked up and I said I don't know where I am but I've been lost here before and if I just make a right and a right I'll get back on the freeway and I know how to get home and for me that was a mindset shift that was I don't need to have all the answers I need to be present enough to kind of find a way to solve the answers you know I need to be okay enough comfortable enough being uncomfortable that I can plug in and our Mentor Patricia Ryan Madson who
wrote this great book improv wisdom when I told her that story she said no no no the you've missed the point the point is to get lost on purpose and discover what you find and for me that was another mindset shift I I love that i' I've been trying to run a little bit more in my life this is I probably started running after GPS so um and I find that it's really exciting to go out and try to get a little bit lost right I was running near my house the other day in Oakland
and I I was going to go the way I know to get home and I thought well I'll just I'll just get a little bit lost and I turned right and literally half a block they made a native plants Park in between two streets it was 10 yard away from where I was and I had a walk in nature completely transported and I would have never had that if my mindset wasn't get a little bit lost like take the slightly less traveled path and in speaking if you're present if you go just a little bit
someplace you hadn't gone before it may feel terrifying at first but you're only going to discover new things that way that that I think is really the Crux of of what hinders a lot of people in these situations is is that ability to let go there is such pressure to do it right the expectation is that I've got I've been asked to do this or I need to do this and I want to do it right and I know in your experience and in a lot of the improvisation that you bring to the work you
do letting go of the getting it right is really important so can you share some ideas about how we get out of our own way there's a wonderful saying that comes from the world of improv and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this but but this notion of dare to be dull and when I I have the audacity to be in front of my MBA students and say dare to be dull and and it sucks the air right out of the room because I immediately have to follow it up with why and and and
would one of you like to help articulate why daring to be dull is so liberating it's exactly that it's liberating because it takes the pressure off we are so driven to be interesting our Mentor Patricia Ryan mson she had a mentor in improvisation is Keith jstone so he's like our grand mentor and he great old wise he said the these like our fear of being seen as unoriginal is one of the most inhibiting fears that we carry and so the the idea of like dare to be dull or be obvious be obvious is the most
powerful creative Mantra that there is he said when you're trying to be original you sound like everyone else trying to be original but when you're obvious you're yourself and that's what's genuine and if the obvious thing you say is what everyone else was thinking then they'll just think you're brilliant for saying it and if your obvious thing is different then that's actually genuinely original right right and that obvious thing is is kind of your voice right um but it's also a it's also true you're not putting on any kind of fake version of yourself to
try to impress people you're actually dealing with what's going on what's in your head what your reaction to the thing is there's another message that that we got from Keith Johnstone and from Patricia that I've personally found really powerful and I use it in my teaching all the time and that is shoot for average and fail cheerfully and when I tell students that especially here at Stanford these high achieving students I can tell that they don't really believe it they laugh they they're sort of guarded and they're still sort of Holdings back but over the
course of 10 weeks of practice doing this of of doing it with other people of getting the the experience of that playful support being able to fail and have it still work out I start to see the armor crack I see them kind of emerge and show up as themselves which is something that they'd been holding back there's so much pressure to be outstanding and original and and you know break the Paradigm and the truth is that we can't actually get to those spaces if we're protecting ourselves we need to allow ourselves to play and
discover and be authentic I think those skills can be learned over time you know you can as as Dan said The more you do it the more you tap into something kind of true instead of trying to wow everybody with this false version I really think this is critical to take the time to to understand how much pressure we put on ourselves and how much judging we do of ourselves that gets in the way of us actually being able to do what it is we want to do and that notion of reflecting on what happens
if it doesn't go well accepting the failure really is liberating we are certainly not saying that this is the only way to communicate I all of us agree there are situations where we need to do what we Trad Al do prepare plan the wording has to be right but to flex these other muscles and be able to to have another approach so we can choose in certain situations to turn off the evaluation and the judging and act in another way well in Patricia's book in the opening she says you know when I go to a
surgeon I certainly want a surgeon who is prepared and schooled up and knows what they're doing but I also want if something goes wrong for them to be able to be present and improvise you know also I would like that surgeon to be able to talk to me about about what's going on I think if you get expert enough in your material then that frees you up to be more connected more conversational because you know deep down I know this you know sometimes we'll do a exercise where we'll have somebody tell the story of their
name just some story about their name first name middle name last name whatever or or tell a story about what they did this weekend and remind them that when you're an expert on the material you don't have to have every word perfectly staged if you build a comfort in your material then you can be a little more free flowing and how you present it being present oriented is really critical in what I'm hearing us discuss and and I know a lot of improvisation requires or invites that kind of present orientation so I'd like to hear
from each of you a bit about how present orientation helps in spontaneous moments and also let's include in that this notion of listening many of us in a Q&A situation where people are asking us questions or asking for our feedback feel that in that moment we are being challenged that we are that we are being uh evaluated and I know attacked in some cases and I know improv has a lot to say about this notion of offers and opportunities do you want to make mention of that I think that re framing these situations as as
a positive then versus a negative can make a big difference yeah I mean one of the improvisor mantras is that there are always offers coming at us from all different directions and that we should notice those offers so an improviser goes on stage with absolutely nothing planned and just the posture of their partner coming on stage will say ah that person is just a little slumped or that person is a little proud and I'll notice that and I'll treat it as an offer and now I'll have a sense of what we're beginning to do on
stage so there are these offers everywhere and our audiences for sure are giving us offers all the time yeah when an A in the moment when an audience member is challenging when they ask a question that might have an aggressive tone to it something that might put you on the defensive especially if you're not that confident about that specific area one of the things that I learned as a facilitator I was taught and I've seen it happen over and over again and that person is the most engaged that's what they're showing you they are engaged
and they are the best opportunity it's not a fight you're not going to fight with them but they're an opportunity so take that energy get delighted whenever something goes wrong on the Improv stage improvisers just get excited they let they get their eyes light up and they go oh good what can we do with this it's live it's an opportunity it's new information I I am surprised that that I'm the one that has to say this but yes and isn't that what it's all about yeah right so someone challenging you someone being sort of negative
or or or a a problem we're instantly reframing that and I've seen it many times the person who has the most challenging question is most likely to be your Champion they're the one who is going to be your biggest supporter when you work with them and are able to engage and turn around the other thing I learned was when they ask a question that has a lot of energy behind it don't answer say tell me more or say what thoughts do you have about that like let them keep talking cuz sometimes you're just misinterpreting that
negative energy it's just they're fired up in another way and the other thing this this is a a story I tell in the class that Matt and I teach together there was a time where I was pitching a TV show and the person I pitched it to said to me tell me why this isn't a Sci-Fi story and I I thought this isn't a Sci-Fi story it never occurred to me it has like maybe there's some element um and and I said why do you say that and it turned out that that person's boss had
been burned by the last three sci-fi stories that they had made what this person was doing was actually asking me for ammunition that he could then take to his boss to sell my story you know he was solving a problem that I didn't even know existed and so rather than seeing that question as an attack see it as this person is bringing information from like outside of my headspace right like I wasn't aware of this by bringing that question he's bringing his concerns and he was actually trying to help me what I love so much
about that story is it brings together many of the things we talked about you you had to be present in the moment right to to see that that's what was going on you had to take the offer that he was giving you and see it as an an offer that there was something of value there so you really had to be present you had to listen and have that minds and I did paraphrase I said or I asked a question back as Dan said you know tell me more why where is this coming from and
it turned out the deeper Source was something useful to both of us I think for folks who are find themselves in situations where they're handling objections or taking questions this advice and guidance is critical you have to listen you have to be open you have to see how this is now an opportunity to expand and extend versus to just defend and entrench I mean one thing that was very powerful that I learned was from you Matt which is to make this into a conversation rather than a performance and that mindset shift of I'm presenting I'm
in front of a group but it's much more like I'm in a conversation where I'm putting information out you're giving information back I'm taking that in and and moving it forward and that's a way to kind of De mystify or take the anxiety out of these these situations absolutely being conversational always I think is beneficial we've talked about a lot of really interesting useful skills that people can use to feel more comfortable speaking in a spontaneous way I'm curious if if both of you would be willing to be a little spontaneous we end each of
these podcasts no no no no we talked about this no not this all right so so indulge me then I mean yes and yes so I'm going to ask each of you three questions that we end each podcast with so we'll alternate back and forth so and we'll switch who goes first so you so one of you will truly be being spontaneous so Dan I'm going to start with you if you were to capture the best communication advice you've ever received as a five to seven-word presentation slide title what would it be Adam already said
it earlier I just want to pull it back in yeah it is not about you nice very good Adam same question to you what five to seven words would be on your slide title that was yours it it's not about you it's about them oh oh okay we we'll give you credit that's all right that's all right so so Adam since you were a little L original uh we'll give you the question number two but I was present and average and and I fail cheerfully who is a communicator that you admire and why you know
who I really enjoy is uh is Trevor the the new um I new it's been years now um host of The Daily Show and his autobiography Audi book is just amazing but what I like about him is a mix of he does seem always present he seems always him you know you really feel his voice but he can speak with authority he can speak sometimes crassly or glibly or sometimes like really kind of Prof profoundly um and so I enjoy the range that he brings and yet it's always him um so that authenticity yeah yeah
and specificity and and naturalness yeah I really enjoy watching him so Dan who's a communicator that you admire and why I'm going to go a little bit obscure here um almost 20 years ago I went to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival there's a British comedian Storyteller named Daniel kitson who was hosting uh there was an event called late and live and late and live was Notorious because it was at midnight and the crowd would be packed and it was and you get a random collection of stand-up comics and they were handling hecklers just pure like that
was the culture of that environment and Daniel was the host of it and he was so masterful at playing with what people would shout out he would disarm them so easily he was so present not high status not aggressive very calm and comfortable but so comfortable in his own skin and he would name exactly what was there in the room that's cool that's cool so usually the third question that I that I ask ask the person to give three ingredients that go into a successful communication recipe but I'm going to turn this into a little
bit of an improv game so instead of each of you telling three let's each and I'll play as well say one ingredient that you would put in the recipe so Adam what's what's one thing you would put in cinnamon oh excellent I'm sorry no I'm sorry um uh like how do I say this you build up a trust in yourself over time and by by putting yourself out there in safer ways and then increasingly you get more and more Comfort I think I think ultimately having some trust in yourself is is a really powerful ingredient
Dan here's something we haven't quite talked about but it fits in Everything plan the talk be ready have do do the research get think about the audience and their needs but in the moment when you're delivering use an opportunity to pay attention like meet people beforehand in the room have some quick conversations listen to the speaker right before you and use something from the room in your talk you don't have to change everything you're going to do but reference something that's come up on that day in that moment so that your talk is particular to
that space in that in that instant in time so I I like it that this notion of trust yourself be ready and I would add to this have fun we put a lot of pressure on ourselves I'll never forget when I went for my first martial arts black belt uh somebody I trust in a mentor right before I went to do the test he looked at me and said have fun and I was in total utter shock how can this be fun this is this is something that's going to be torturous but taking that approach
really made a big difference I think those three ingredients would make for a wonderful spontaneous speaker thank you for that and thank you thank you for joining today I really hope that people listening in take to heart the advice that we gave it's about the approach you take it's about having that open mindset being present listening relying on structure trusting in yourself taken together those are the skills that will help somebody become a better spontaneous speaker thank you guys thank you you you've just listened to think fast talk smart a podcast produced by Stanford's graduate
school of business for more information and episodes visit gb. stanford.edu or subscribe to our show wherever you get your podcasts you can find us on social media at Stanford GSB
