visualization is a really useful technique and you see yourself not just in the moment of speaking but getting up to the stage seeing it being welled thinking about how you step off the stage we see athletes do this kind of thing all the time and there's good research to say that this desensitizes people most of the public speaking we do is on the spot it's not often you give a prepared talk you actually have to prepare to be spontaneous and that's counterintuitive but when you think about it in athletics or jazz music it's like of course you would prepare at practice are there any other techniques that you love that you find people find really helpful in calming their anxiety strive for connection over Perfection by daring to be D just answer the question just give the feedback just be engaged in the small talk by doing that you dial down the volume of self-evaluation freeing up resources that can be used to really help you succeed today my guest is Matt Abrahams Matt is a professor at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business where he teaches a very popular class on communication and public speaking he's also the host of the incredibly popular podcast than fast talk smart and the author of the very popular book think faster and talk smarter Matt also coaches people one-on-one on public speaking and communication skills and in our conversation we focus on the two areas that people most need help with one reducing their anxiety before and during any form of public speaking and getting better at speaking on on the spot including giving better toasts giving feedback doing Q&A and even apologizing like we talk about in the actual conversation speaking well is a superpower in your career for interviewing for being great in meetings for pitching your manager and ideas to Leading teams and the skill becomes even more important as you grow in your career the good news is that you can get better at it with a bit of help I've worked on this a lot over the course of my career and I still get really nervous before big talks and even before every podcast episode but many of these techniques I actually put into practice and I share that in our conversation if you pick just a couple things from this episode to put into practice you will become a better Communicator you'll be less nervous and you'll get better at dealing with on the spot moments if you enjoy this podcast don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube it's the best way to avoid missing future episodes and it helps the podcast tremendously with that I bring you Matt Abrahams after a short word from our sponsors let me tell you about a product called sprig NextGen product teams like figma and notion rely on Sprig to build products that people love sprig is an AI powered platform that enables you to collect relevant product experience insights from the right users so you can make product decisions quickly and confidently here's how it works it all starts with sprigs precise targeting which allows you to trigger inapp studies based on users characteristics and actions taken in product then sprigs AI is layered on top of all studies to instantly surface your product's biggest learnings sprig surveys enables you to Target specific users to get relevant and timely feedback sprig replays enables you to capture targeted session Clips to see your product experience firsthand sprigs AI is a GameChanger for product teams they're the only platform with product level AI meaning it analyzes data across all of your studies to centralize the most important product opportunities Trends and correlations in one realtime feed visit spri.com Lenny to learn more and get 10% off that's sp.com Lenny this episode is brought to you by duvail the customer insights hub for product teams are you working in a feature Factory building filler that nobody wants probably because the sad truth is that most SAS features are rarely or never used costing the industry billions every year let's change that product managers dovetail is holding their first industry conference it's called Insight out and they want you to come over one day in San Francisco the product Community is coming together to learn how to better leverage customer insights and build products that people actually love to use it's on April 11th and you can hear from product leaders from Uber twitch meta and Netflix as they share their strategies for driving Innovation thriving in uncertainty and balancing customer centered work with business needs and here's the kicker it's absolutely free for online tickets just go to dovet tale.com Lenny to register this is thanks to dovetail the best way for product teams to get the most out of customer insights check it out at dovet tale.com Lenny Matt thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast Lenny I am excited for our conversation and thank you for having me thank you for being here I'm even more excited for the conversation so what I want to do with our time today is there's kind of two areas I want to focus one is talking about techniques to help people manage anxiety when public speaking and two is helping people get better at speaking on the spot which you wrote a whole book about and if you think about it I think that's like most of the public speaking we do is on the spot it's not often you give a prepared talk it's usually like you said Q&A or toast someone wants to give you or ask you for feedback or things like that so I'm excited to dig into those things how do that sound broadly absolutely I I look forward to that and and those are topics I'm very excited to talk about have done a lot of research in and and look forward to sharing more I suspected as much okay so let's talk about anxiety so you have a bunch of really novel techniques in your book and your podcast for calming your body down calming your mind down when you're planning to give a talk when you're actually about to give a talk when you're giving a talk and a lot of these I haven't actually seen anywhere else and I've used a few of them and they are really great so what I was thinking we do is let me go through the ones that I found most useful and interesting and just share your advice on those and then see if there's anything I missed and then maybe add those at the end how's that that sounds great that sounds great I love that you've applied some of these techniques and found value from them I'll talk about those I'll talk about those okay so first of all just to touch on this you're not a fan of the uh Picture People in your audience naked approach correct The Brady Bunch advice is not good advice I don't know about you and I don't know anybody who who could imagine seeing a bunch of people in their underwear and feel more comfortable with that and I think if you do there are other issues you need to be dealing with then beyond speaking anxiety yeah it feels like highly inappropriate now just that idea trying everyone no but you know underlying that if you give me a moment there is some there is some value this notion of visualization as a tool of desensitization actually can be very helpful but you're not visualizing the audience half naked what you're doing is you're visualizing yourself in that space you're visualizing the audience responding to you and what you're saying so just like a pilot might do a flight simulator having a visualization can actually really help you feel more comfortable and confident it literally puts you in the room even though you're not there and there are some tools and I I'm fascinated by these tools that are virtual reality tools that can also serve to desensitize you so this notion of seeing your audience uh in advance of actually speaking can actually impact your level of comfort it's let's keep everybody clothed and let's keep them all focused on your topic let's actually talk about this one while we're on it because I think this is a really powerful technique an idea just to just to kind of summarize you picture ahead of time what it's going to look like and feel like you talking looking at the audience can you talk about that and just how to go about using that technique yeah absolutely so visualization allow and this is some of the oldest research on public speaking anxiety it was research done in the 80s from the University of Oregon so visualization it what it does is it allows you to see the event in a way that you have much more control over it so you can think about it so a good visualization involves some deep breathing to calm yourself either you close your eyes or you just uh look at a picture maybe you can get a picture of the environment you're speaking in I often recommend speakers uh see the room even if they're not physically present but get a picture online uh or some way Envision yourself in the room Envision yourself in the room with the people you'll be speaking to often we know the individuals or some of them we can also go online and figure out who they are so visualization is a really useful technique and you see yourself not just in the moment of speaking but getting up to the stage delivering the presentation seeing it being well received thinking about how you step off the stage and by taking yourself through that you in essence are doing a dress rehearsal even though you're not physically in the room and there's good research to say that this desensitizes people we see athletes do this kind of thing all the time where they'll do visualization to help them and and it really does work and like I said there are virtual tools now that can help you do this where you can actually program it to to have a certain size audience you can even program some of these to have a responsive audience or a distracted audience all of this in service of just preparing you for what you're really going to see and the bottom line is this what you're doing for yourself is making sure it's not new and novel it's something been there done that even though if it was uh virtual or visualized in your mind to help you feel better about the circumstance it gives you a sense of agency I've done this myself actually I gave a tedex talk once and it was the probably the scariest talk I've ever given and I spent a lot of time doing this and it doesn't actually have to take that much time like it could be like a five minute thing where you sit down calm yourself and then just picture the stuff and ideally do it a couple times I imagine that's right good for you and congratulations giving a tedex talk that was a high Stak talk that was it was that was before tedex became super uncool it was like it was still pretty early uh it's out there in the internet in case people want to don't say they're uncool I'm doing one in two day uh two weeks they're so cool that is they are cool that's right incredible I've done a number and I I've done a number of them and I've coached many people and I think that there's a lot of value that they can provide people there is there is I think they've they've just become slightly less cool because now there's a lot of them but they're still incredibly cool I'm very proud okay thank you so on the visualization piece I think and just to we have a lot of techniques but just on this one part of it is continue to calm yourself as you're doing it I think that's really important right because it's you want to help your body not connect to the stress that you're GNA that you're feeling like you're going to experience that's correct any any distance you can give yourself from the anxiety that you're feeling is helpful and there are lots of techniques that help give you a little bit of distance and visualization is one of those okay one of my favorite techniques that in my in this bucket it might be in the on the spot advice bucket but I think it works great here is to is what you call Dare to be dull can you talk about that because I love that yeah so I I really leaned into this with the spontaneous speaking work that I've been doing as of late but it applies to anybody speaking uh this is a notion that comes from the world of improvisation and when people hear improv they often think of standup comedy having to be funny and that's not what improv is all about improv is all about being present being collaborative being open and it's a wonderful tool just to help you get present oriented think of it as like meditation in action but also it teaches lots of valuable skills for communication when we communicate especially spontaneously we want to do it really well uh we want to answer the question with the best answer we want to give the right feedback we want to be the most interesting in small talk and that puts a lot of pressure on ourselves and and you can think of it this way it's it's really taxing our cognitive bandwidth your brain in many ways is like a CPU a computer it's not a Perfect Analogy but it works and if I am constantly judging and evaluating everything I am saying against some standard of perfection whatever that is it means I have a limited amount of bandwidth to focus on what I'm actually saying and connecting to my audience if you have a a laptop or a phone that has lots of Windows and apps open and you are are your each one of those is performing less well because of the other ones being open so I often say strive for connection over Perfection by daring to be D just get the task done just answer the question just give the feedback just be engaged in the small talk and by doing that you dial down the volume of self-evaluation freeing up resources that can be used to really help you succeed so dare to be dull is all about giving yourself permission to just be present and do what's needed and when you do that you find that you actually do quite a good job at it that last point I think is really important you talk about this in your book is when you start with okay I'm just going to say something it'll be fine without that pressure you end up saying something better and more interesting and more insightful because you're less nervous about it that's exactly right that we we are our we are often our biggest impediments to good communication because of the anxiety we bring to the party that's awesome and I think this can apply to prepared talks too when you're preparing a deck like don't put this pressure on yourself this has to be the best talk ever just like I'm going to do my best let me just start with something that's good enough people learn something and then from that you end up their editing ends up leading to something great in my experience right awesome okay let's go to the next technique and this is another one I've practiced and another guest on the podcast actually suggested this and these two remind me of using this one which is to tell yourself when you're goingon to be giving a talk I'm excited this is gonna be a lot of fun I'm so excited to give this talk and kind of reframe it from I'm nervous to like no I'm excited this going to be amazing can you talk about that technique absolutely so this is a one of many cognitive reframing techniques uh it is often attributed to my friend and and colleague Allison Woods Brooks She's at Harvard Business School who did some research into this and what she found is uh well first take a step back when you get physically aroused by anxiety you're under that fight ORF flight threat response it turns out that same respon response happens to your body when you're excited the the human body has pretty much just one arousal response our heart beats faster we breathe more shallow we get a little shaky but the big difference is how we label that so if I say hey Lenny guess what uh your colleague couldn't show up today and you need to go teach the class or you need to go give that uh presentation you might feel your heart rate go up uh get a little shaky sweat on your brow and you're seeing that as negative but if I said hey Lenny guess what you just won the lottery same physiological response would happen but you would see that likely as more positive so how we label the arousal matters and what Allison's research and others have followed up with suggests is that when we feel those symptoms of anxiety rather than seeing it as negative say this is exciting I get to share my point of view I get to demonstrate my value and in so doing by seeing it as more positive it causes Us by definition to relax and her research fascinatingly found that people actually were perceived as communicating better and again that's because that pressure was taken off of them so I challenge everybody to think about what are the exciting elements of the communication opportunities you have and really lean into those and when you feel those anxiety symptoms remind yourself these are signs of excitement these is this is me being excited about sharing this information and it can really help this is another one I've done and it super works it's sounds so trivial and so like what why would this do anything but I find you just say that just like I'm going to have so much fun this is going to be exciting like that does it does make an imp an impact so another one to try even though it sounds really trivial kind of along these lines there's another technique you recommend which is a mantra having a mantra you repeat to yourself I don't know if it's kind of the same general idea but you have a couple mantras that you recommend to people like I have value to add and things like that what advice do you have there yes thank you and that's mine uh the one that I that you shared is I have value to add so if you if we were to really listen to The Voice in our heads when it comes to communication we say a lot of negative things to ourselves we say things like you know I'm not prepared I'm not going to be as good as this person I'm an impostor we we carry around with us a lot of this chatter that actually sets us up to not do well or to be more nervous so if we can actually change that talk track it can help us so I'm not saying you have to go to an extreme and say I'm going to be the best Communicator ever rather you can simply say as I do and as you alluded to what I'll say right before I speak is I have value to bring often when we are in communicative situations especially at work people want to hear from us we've been invited to speak uh we're on the the agenda for the meeting there is value people can take from our communication and we just have to remind ourselves of that so having some little Mantra that you can say that's that's not over the top but just makes sense it could be as simple as you've got this or I'm prepared or I know my stuff and I actually encourage people to write it on a Post-It note if you're old school sometimes people put it into their phones as a reminder so like a minute or two minutes before they're set to give the presentation or participate in the meeting it flashes up we just have to turn off or turn down the noise of that internal negative selft talk what are some other Ras that you found helpful that people use they they're very personal to to different people I was just coaching a senior leader the other day who his Mantra was last time this went well he's a leader he does a lot of the same presentations and just by saying last time this went well reminds him that it's likely to go well this time we are very susceptible to catastrophizing when we're very nervous about things especially when we're exposed in front of people uh not in The Brady Bunch exposure we talked about earlier but you know when we're out there uh speaking or communicating and and simply reminding ourselves that often they go very well is helpful yeah there's another one that I think you shared which is it's not it's not about me it's about my content yes exactly that's another one that's a that's a great one it can be very helpful the one you shared about I've got this reminds me my wife took a course with the um artist's way writer Julie Cameron I think is her name and she has this piece of advice where you name your critic your inner critic that's always telling you to stop doing stuff you name him or her so I name mine Jim and then you say like and then when he or she is giving you things you don't want to hear you're just like Jim I got this Jim I don't need this advice there there is a lot of evidence on personifying uh the things that challenge us and then having conversations with it and it makes it it's it's a way of um rationalizing some of the things that we do that are quite negative so um something something there for sure to to be thinking about there we go bonus advice that was bonus advice yes I didn't expect that well and the cool thing that what you're that what you're highlighting is there is a lot of advice out there on how to manage anxiety many of us feel like we're the only people who feel this nervous because we see our colleagues our friends or Ted Talks as you were talking about and we see these people communicating just so effortlessly often a lot of work went into that we don't see that work uh and sometimes just knowing that others experience it makes us feel better if you allow me I'll tell this very quick story I was in the San Francisco Airport uh this was uh several years ago after my speaking up without freaking out book came out and my name was called over the PA system at the at the airport counter they they my the seat that I was supposed to sit in was broken and they wanted to talk to me about it so when I came away from that somebody came up to me and said hey you're the guy that wrote that book on speaking anxiety I said yes and and I said what do you know about it he goes oh I bought the book I said 'oh was it helpful he say incredibly helpful but I didn't read it I'm like this is weird so you're telling me the book was helpful and you didn't read it so I said tell me more and he said just knowing that a book like that existed made me feel better because I don't know you and I know you certainly didn't write the book for me so it implies that lots of people have this issue and just by normalizing anxiety which by the way is the normal condition those of us who study this believe it is innate to Being Human to feel nervous communicating in front of others so sometimes just reminding yourself that you're not alone and that others have it can actually help reduce the pressure that we feel this is such an important point that I kicking myself for not starting with this also because I think this is something people don't realize they see all their execs at their company speaking incredibly well so confidently so articulately and just like oh my God how will I ever be someone like that is there anything more you can share just like you know you you have a tons of students that go through your class you see these issues they they're more transparent I think about their challenges I imagine is there anything more could share there to help people feel better like this is most people even when you see someone amazing at speaking they are also probably nervous with regard to that I think we just need to talk about it more we need to share about it I mean I always will share that I I still have anxiety in speaking in certain situations and and it's something that's taken me a long time to work on I also help people understand that it's not a light switch it's not like you either have it or you don't it's it's a process and so the idea is over time we will feel less nervous if we apply some of these principles you and I are talking about uh a great technique to help people that I that often isn't talked about is many of us feel much more comfortable in conversation than we do in presenting and conversation is a back and forth so you can actually set up a lot of your communication situations a presentation a meeting Etc as conversations that does and you don't even have to have a conversation with the audience you can simply have it with yourself for example what would it be like if you were to start a presentation by saying today I have three questions I'd like to answer question number one is and you state the question and then you answer it I am actually having a conversation with myself in that moment where I am asking myself a question I happen to know the answer I give the answer this again just like the reframing is excitement versus anxiety this is a refrain I'm not presenting I'm having a conversation and in so doing it ratchets down that anxiety so we need to talk about it we need to share our experiences with developing anxiety man agement plans we realize it's not binary it's not I have it or I don't and we start seeing where we feel more comfortable and how can we bring that that Comfort level into the types of situations that make us nervous like simply having a conversation with yourself you have another technique I think that's different maybe it's exactly the same which is to ask a question of somebody else as you're talking which is I think deflects attention for me you can talk about that yeah so so we we talked about uh the way we desensitize through visualization the other thing we can do is dist ract right so I coached a very senior leader at Google who got very nervous when he was up in front of people and what we did is we distract his audience so he would start every single presentation saying these words good morning let's watch this video and he'd show a 30- second video video that was on topic about something they were going to talk about in the meeting when the video stopped he would then facilitate a discussion of what that video was about and then he would ease into his content so he went from being a presenter to being a facilitator somebody who's having a conversation with the audience that made him feel so much better and so all of us can do things that can distract our audience now when I say distract I don't mean take them on a tangent that's not relevant to what you're saying but maybe you ask them a question maybe you tell them a story maybe you show them a video or ask them to read something so there are lots of things that you can do that will help get the attention off you for just a little bit so that you can and then focus on what works for you or take that deep breath that'll help calm you down all of these are very useful techniques yeah it's interesting how once you start talking it's okay usually it's that beginning part that you need yeah most people are most nervous one uh minute before speaking and the first minute of speaking and if you can find ways to get yourself through that then it becomes much easier for most people there are some people who that's not true for but for most people that's that's the way it works awesome okay next technique that actually another guest mentioned and we spent a bunch of time on this a guest named Johnny Miller which is a breathing technique and just to give a little context from what he taught us is that 80% of our neurons go from our body to our brain versus 20% is our brain telling our body what to feel and so This research shows that what our body's feeling is what our brain is going to think so if our body's like acting nervous we're going to think oh we're nervous and if you change the state of your body your mind feels I love this stuff this research embodied cognition is what it's called IS F fascinating to me I I'll share one of my most favorite studies in this there was a researcher at Duke I think it was Duke who um he's all the the only experimental variation that he did is he had people hold something that was cold in their hand like a an iced coffee versus a hot a warm coffee and then he asked the the participants to make ratings of people and if you were holding something cold you saw the person as a colder person is more aloof and more distant and if you were holding something warm you saw them as more collaborative and embracing I find this stuff fascinating what our body feels our minds think awesome so along those lines there's a technique that you recommend that he recommended but I think it's a great reminder of the double exhale where you breathe in and then you exhale twice as long can you talk about that and help people yeah so breathing is is very helpful in managing so many of our anxiety symptoms it slows down the heart rate makes our voice sound more normal because when we we get nervous we breathe shallow and and that changes our voice is a wind instrument it changes the way sound can reduce some of the shakiness so deep belly breathing the kind you do if you've ever done yoga or Tai Chi chiong really important to do and there are a whole bunch of variations on it the one you're talking about is the double inhalation where you take an an inhale in till you feel completely full and then you sneak in a little extra air and then you take a long exhale there are things that people call it box breathing and other types of breathing the bottom line is this what's critical to the relaxation response is the exhale lots of ways to inhale lots of ways to Exhale you want your exhale to be longer than the inhale the magic of the relaxation happens during the the exhale so I have a rule of thumb I jokingly call it a rule of lung you want your exhale to be twice as long as your inhale so if you take a three count in even if you sneak in a little extra air as we were talking about take a sixc count out and it is that way that you will feel you not only will your body physiologically feel less stressed you will be more focused in a present moment and not catastrophizing about all the things that might happen in the future great yeah so it's like another example of this sounds so trivial and like why would breathing differently do have any impact on my nervousness but one there's all this research that shows that it does and two if you try it and this is another one I use is like it actually works like very quickly and you do it a few times and like well I feel really different yeah absolutely and it's interesting you put these together from the way I've seen that these are two different techniques but I've never tried them together one is I think huberman is big on this one all his Clips are always talking about this one of you inhale fully and then you inhale a little bit more and there's like some capillaries or something in your lungs that fill up that help span yeah fan and then there's the 448 is the way this other guest shared is like breathe in four seconds hold it four seconds breathe out for eight seconds but I'm going to try both wow that's a it's going to double up my calmness you'll be so mellow nothing will bother you so mellow okay are there any other techniques that you love that you find people find really helpful in calming their anxiety well so the the first book had 50 techniques and not all 50 techniques work for everybody uh one that I personally think is a lot of fun uh is getting present oriented because when I'm in the present by definition I'm not worried about the future and many of our anxiety comes from our fear of a potential negative future outcome like I'm not going to achieve my goal so if I can do anything to be in the present moment that helps me out a lot something I do as part of my personal anxiety management plan is I say tongue twisters tongue twisters for me are a great way to get present oriented you can't say it right if you don't say the tongue twister uh if you're not pro focused on the present moment and it also warms up your voice a lot of nervous speakers get so inside their head that they don't warm up their voice and we all know if you've ever done any exercise or competed in any sports you should warm up first we have this mistaken notion that we can go from Silence to Brilliance without warming up and I like saying tongue twisters out loud to get present oriented and to warm up my voice so that's one that I I often recommend people think it's silly but I have people who like that really works it really helps me to get centered and to warm up and so I like that one a lot well let's share a couple tongue twisters what are some recomend I will only share my tongue twister I say Lenny if you promise to say it after me absolutely I'm so ready this is my favorite tongue twister takes five seconds to say it's three phrases long and if you say it wrong you say a naughty word so I'm going to be listening as we all your listeners so you prepared uh so it it goes as follows I slit a sheet I slit a sheet a sheet I slit a sheet I slit and on that slitted sheet I sit and on that slitted sheet I sit very good you didn't say that naughty word I'm sure you can imagine what it would have been there's a lot of lot of danger a lot of Mind lot of danger but in that moment you weren't thinking about what's the next question I'm going to ask Matt or you know how much longer do we have in the podcast no you were simply focused on what we were saying and trying to say it without saying a naughty word so that's not have to censor this podcast yeah I've only had to bleep one guest in all my years of doing this so okay cool we're gonna link to that is there any other ones you want to share before we move on to getting better at speaking on the spot well so the last one I'll say is uh and this one is another one that falls in the kind of funny category but there's research that says that when you swear curse it actually helps you reduce anxiety when you curse you release a flood of neurochemicals that blunt out the neurochemicals associated with anxiety cortisol being a big one so you get a big dopamine hit for example serotonin you know when you swear so I'm not saying get up on stage and drop an F bomb but you know you might you might my students love this right I mean it's like Matt's giving me permission to swear and no that's not what I'm doing but but there it it's an interesting technique that that seems to help some people is to is to curse uh not necessarily uh in front of people but that can help and it also has a an analgesic effect it actually reduces pain um as well so that's interesting I can see during birth women screaming curse words yeah I'm not gonna say what I heard when my kids were born but uh uh but again this could double up with the tongue twister where you just go for it say yeah every every tug twister has to start with n tuck it right and then we're good this episode is brought to you by Kota and I mean that literally I use Koda every day to help me plan each episode of this very podcast it's where I keep my content calendar my guest research and also the questions that I plan to ask each guest also during the recording itself I have a Koda page up to remind myself what I want to talk about Kota is an all-in-one platform that combines the best of documents spreadsheets and apps to help you and your team get more done now is the perfect time to get started with Koda especially its extensive planning capabilities with Koda you can stay aligned and ship Faster by managing your planning Cycles in one location you can set and measure okrs with full visibility across teams and stakeholders you can map dependencies create progress visualizations and identify risk areas plus you can access hundreds of pressure tested templates for everything from roadmap strategy stry to final decision making to prds if you want a platform that empowers your team to strategize plan and track goals together you can get started with Koda today for free and if you want to see for yourself why product teams at high growth companies like Pinterest figma and qu trick run onoda take advantage of the special limited time offer just for startups head over to coda.io Lenny to sign up and get $1,000 in credit that's coda.io Lenny to sign up and get $1,000 in credit coda.io Lenny okay let's shift to talking about talking on the spot and I see how you enunciated very you said shift very carefully I appreciate that we gonna be so so careful I don't want this podcast flagged and uh and for adults only okay shift to uh a new topic so you have a whole book about how to get better speaking on the spot and I think why this is important is again what I said at the beginning that I think most of our public speaking in quotes is not planned public speaking there's people asking for feedback in a meeting uh people wanting you to give a toast Q&A as you talked about so what I want to do is you have advice for broadly getting better at these things and then you have advice for very specifically how to get better at giving better toast doing better Q&A getting better at small talk and things like that so I want to start with the broad advice and then get into each of these that sound good absolutely abolutely how about you share your favorite techniques for broadly getting better at speaking on the spot and then we'll see where that gu sure so the first thing in helping yourself feel better speaking spontaneously which is the vast majority of our communication the plan presenting the the practiced pitch the the meeting with agenda pale in comparison to the times that we are spontaneously speaking and the first thing that is important for everybody to know is you can all we can all get better at it that's the fundamental bottom line many of us feel like we're either born with the Gift of Gab or we're not and so the first thing we have to realize is we can get better at it the second big point to make is you actually have to prepare to be spontaneous and that's counterintuitive but it is through preparation that we get better at it and if you think about it if you think about an athlete you know when an athlete is doing their sport they are being spontaneous they are they are responding to the conditions that present themselves to them what helps them do well is all the preparation and practice that they've done so there are lots of analoges to to this but when we think about it in terms of communication it seems foreign but when you think about it in athletics or jazz music it's like of course you would prepare and practice so those are the two big underlying principles to helping people get better the next level has to do with we have to attack both mindset and approach and the actual messaging itself the only way I have found to help people get better at this is to to look at how we approach it our mindset and then how we actually craft the messages through structure and focus that help us be better so that's the gradual process from the the the broadest level about how we have to go about making this better for ourselves maybe let's dig into the structure J what is your advice for how to think about structuring if you're on the spot like oh how do I share something smart oh see that the bad word came out so you're ready for my tongue twister but the um so structure is critical in spontaneous speaking most of us because we we feel the intense pressure the anxiety we just talked about we just spew out information we list and itemize information we take our audience on the Journey of our own discovery of what we want to say as we're saying it and our brains are not wired for lists of information uh in fact you know Lenny how many items do you need to buy from the grocery store before you actually have to physically write it down for me it's four anything over four I'm G to forget something our brains aren't wired for lists right and so I text myself yeah right exactly yeah no I I'm I'm old school I actually put it on a piece of paper but the the the point is that we're not wired that way our brains are actually wired for story for connection a logical connection of ideas so it's about connecting those pieces together so a structure is nothing more than a beginning a middle and an end a package of information the the the structure that almost everybody listening in is familiar with is one that comes from the world of advertising most advertisements are set up as problem solution benefit there's some problem in the world here's how we solve it with our product or service and here's how you benefit from it that's a structure it's a logical beginning middle and end these items have a connection so by finding a structure that you can rely on when put on the spot it Hales your burden when you're put on the spot you have to think about what to say and how to say the structure tells you how to say it and then you just have to think about what to put into it so it's like having a recipe and if I have a recipe and I have good ingredients I can cook a good meal so there are lots of structures the whole second part of the book think faster talk smarter is specific structures for specific situations introducing yourself making an apology giving feedback and I'm not saying every time you give an apology or or give feedback that you have to follow these structures just gives you a place to go when you're in that moment where you're like where do I go how do I start cool so we're going to talk about some of those examples one of the structures that I liked that I wrote down is called prep which is make your point give a reason for making that point Give an example and then is the last one point again yeah restate your point review itate your point that feels like something that say in product teams can come up a lot it's just like here's what I think here's why here's an example and then let me just remind you again what the point I'm making that's right right you know the the yes I love prep and the structure I really like uh is is a three question structure what so what now what and people on product teams I think can benefit so much for this what is your product your service your offering your update your feedback it's the what of what why you're speaking the so what is why is this important and relevant to the people you're talking to or to your company or to prospective clients and then the now what is what coming what what comes next so on a product team if you're describing a feature here's what the feature is here's why it's important and here's what we're doing about it if you're giving an update in an update meeting a standup that you're having here's what I'm working on here's why it's important here's what I'm doing next by packaging the information up and what so what now what it becomes much more digestible much more memorable just like Prep Prep works really well for a point you're making what so what now what works really well for a broader presentation update feedback session that you're giving so having a whole series of these tools in your toolkit can really make a difference so we've talked about three structures so far uh what so what now what prep which is make the point give a reason example and then restate the point and then problem solution benefit so people listening to this like oh amazing all these structures are great do you have any advice on how to like remember these you're like oh Matt what do you think of this uh design like oh which one should I go with I I try to give each structure a catchy name what so what now what rolls off the tongue uh there's a structure in the book for giving feedback called for eyes for apologizing triaa so part of it is just coming up with a pneumonic that works for you and you can name them whatever you want but really the way to get familiar with them and to to have them at the ready is to use them so if when I coach people on what so what now what I encourage them at the end of a podcast they listen to or something they read take a moment say what was it about why is it important to me and what can I do with that information and if you do that not only do you get better and more comfortable deploying that structure but you also remember the material better because there's a whole bunch of research that says when we interrogate the material that we listen to or read we we digest it and remember it more so in 30 seconds you're really helping yourself at least in two ways by getting the structure down and remembering more so you have to put it into practice the other way to do it which we do a lot in my classroom is we have people dissect communication so you listen to somebody or you see it and they say what structure do they use and so it's just it's about awareness building and then actually getting the Reps the only way you get better at communication spontaneous or planned is the way you get better at anything repetition reflection and feedback you got to practice you got to think about what worked or what didn't and then you have to get feedback from others we are not always the best judges of our communication and in so doing repetition reflection and feedback take your communic takes your communication to the next level it's a lot of work Matt that's a lot of work it is work there is no shortcut okay but that's true with most things in life that are really important there's no short that's right that's right as people are thinking about this and listening to this there's your course obviously they teach at Stanford and only Stanford students can take that there's your book obviously is there anything else just and if there's nothing that's totally fine that you point people to to get to actually practice these outside of the workplace are there courses that anyone can take that recommend anything else you can point people to absolutely there are a lot of resources out there so uh one I'm a huge proponent and a former member of Toast Masters I think Toast Masters is a wonderful organization uh designed primarily to give you the Reps right they do some teaching but it's really to give you the Reps so uh I I highly recommend Toast Masters improvisation is another way to get comfortable with these skills when people hear improv they think uh oh I got to be funny and it's about performing and it's not improv is really just about being more comfortable being present and really focusing on collaborating with others and then their courses so you you mentioned obviously that that people have to be MBA students to take my MBA class but Stanford and other institutions have continuing Studies classes or extension classes that are open to the community so I every quarter teach a class that's open to anybody who registers all over the world it's virtual I have students this very quarter who take a class on a Monday night Pacific Time 700 p.m. I've got somebody in Egypt I have somebody in China you know so so there are ways to to take advantage of things happening at universities uh without being an enrolled student so I would Point people to all of those and then clearly listening to podcasts reading books checking out blogs and videos can be really helpful I think it's your point it's like you can read about this and listen to podcast all you want but you're not going to actually that get that much better and with your course I imagine there's practice you're doing as a part of the course everything is applied the the only way to get better at communication is to do communication to watch communication and that's why in in the books I write I have these try this it's literally put the book down go do this and then come back because that's how you learn communication and and so yes any Avenue to help you get the Reps is going to be helpful I'll be honest I did none of the try this I just I'm just like that's too much work so I think that's why it's important to take something where you have to do it because it's too easy just like hey yeah yeah so so there are you you're not the first person to say that they don't they don't take the time to do that there are others who say they really appreciate that uh and for people uh such as yourself the at the very end of my book I have a QR code that takes you to a bunch of videos so if you don't want to do it yourself you can actually watch people do it or watch me do it and so so that that's at least better than not doing any of it awesome I'll also give a shout out to Toast Masters I did Toast Masters for a while and two things there one is there's a special focus on on the spot speaking that's a part of the sequence yeah they call them table topics table topics yeah and that's like a 60c someone gets up and just has to talk on something so it's a big part of that method also I did it for a long time and all I did was I was the um counter or the timer like you can do it without having to give any talks for as long as you want it's and it's like very cheap and they're everywhere there's like a local chapter wherever you are absolutely and many companies sponsor their own Toastmasters groups yeah so that's great yeah and and they are very good at easing people into it you're not forced to do any and the same is with improv a good improv teacher never forces anybody to do anything great okay we went way off topic but let's get back to our the agenda I had which is let's talk about specific situations and advice you have for getting better at these okay so maybe we start with small talk and there's one that I love and I find so important and so subtle which is have comparable levels of disclosure and the question basically is how do we get better at small talk and here's one technique yeah so let me get to that point in a second because that's a that's a more refined Point than than some general principles so when it comes to Small Talk many people dread Small Talk uh they they feel really awkward about it I think Small Talk has a bad reputation needs to be rebranded I think a lot of big things happen in small talk we learn about ourselves and others we we form and Foster relationships you know I I challenge everybody listening to think about some of their friends or closest friends how did you meet them probably some component of small talk played a role especially early in those relationships so it does good things for us the best advice I have ever heard for small talk came from a guest on my podcast her name's Rachel Greenwald she's a she's an interesting person she's an academic and a Matchmaker really fascinating and her advice was this be interested not interesting many of us go into small talk thinking we have to be super interesting we have to spike the ball over the net every time when in fact small talk is more like playing the game of hacky sack where it's simply just set the other person up to be successful and get the ball back to you so if we go in with that mindset it makes it easier now there's some rules that we can follow uh one rule is the one that you shared that in small talk there should be a balance of disclosure or depth of disclosure over time so if you're telling me about the first time your first pet died and I'm telling you my favorite color is blue there's a discrepancy and disclosure there clearly you've revealed a lot more than I have and we have this notion of reciprocity that if you share something that is appropriate but is more disclosive that I should at some point match that level or come close and if we don't then it feels very awkward and we feel like we're we're not Jing in that way I don't want everybody sitting with a little card that they're checking off but having that General notion in mind can help and and the trick here is not to be too disclosive too quickly right so if if I if we start small talk and we're talking about the meeting that we're at and you immediately jump into the fight you had with your significant other that might lead to divorce that's that's a deep big step that might feel a little inappropriate but over time if we continue to disclose it might be perfectly natural for you to share that so there there's sort of expectations and we just have to be mindful of those another thing we need to be mindful of that I think is really important is this distinction between shifting and supporting responses in a conversation I can be supportive that is you might say hey Matt I just got back from Costa Rica I could say oh great did you spend time in San Jose did you get to any of the beaches those are supporting responses I'm asking you to keep telling me more a shifting response would be like oh you went to Costa Rica I went to Hawaii and the goal in a good conversation is to have more supporting responses than shifting but to have some shifting responses because if all I do is continually support you it looks like I don't want to share I'm not being disclosive at all so there are these subtle things that we can be aware of to help the conversation go and to breed that intimacy and immediacy that we feel but it takes a a congruence a balancing of doing that this is awesome I feel like everyone needs this class to just like how do I how do I talk to people what's the right way to talk well the the the right the point that you're bringing up there is we're never taught this stuff right and yet we have to do it all the time and that's why focusing on it I think really matters and and it can really as you said superpower it can be a superpower because so many people don't do this or spend the time getting better at it we all operate under this notion of that definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results and that's not good for small talk and other communication situations I love this balance you just shared so the primary piece of advice for small talk is be interested not interesting ask person questions get excited about what they're telling you there's a book classic book How to Win Friends and Influence People which is very much about this highly recommend it it's like very old school now but there's so much good advice there like the there's no better sound to someone's ears than their name so just saying their name they're like yeah I love that and then just like smiling there's all these like very simple things that that book shares uh sounds like you're you recommend and you're a fan of that book it's something you I I know the book some of the stuff I some of that stuff is has been true for for a long time some of the stuff I'm not a big fan of ingratiation and manipulation so I I I like authenticity and some of the advice in books like that can sound like smile nod your head you know and all of that yeah and all of that can sound a little manipulative and inauthentic but I think some of those principles are are important and if you can in an authentic true appropriate way leverage some of that I think it will help you yeah somebody once uh shared a story where their kid like when they're 13 they read that book and it just effed them up for a while because they just started putting these to practice way too young yeah well one thing I mean all of a sudden you're focusing on you can get so wrapped up in in doing these things that you're actually not connecting it's like people who travel on a vacation and all they do is take pictures of where they are instead of experiencing where they are right and and that's that's not where we want to be with this advice but I love this other component of because a lot of people hear this advice ask questions be interested be excited this version of it of but you need to have somewhat equal levels of disclosure is really important because I I fall into this sometimes or like I don't care about myself I just want to ask you questions and this is like going great I'm just going to keep asking and if you're not sharing anything about yourself it gets really strange even when they ask you you're like no no let's keep talking about you like nobody you think they want that but they don't they actually want to hear about you yeah yeah absolutely and and you do such a lovely job as a podcast I mean so podcast host is a great job for you if you like asking questions but I bet you you will you have found because I have found this for me as my as being a host of think fast talk smart is that that sharing a little bit about your own experience actually makes the conversations go better you know and so so I I think that's a lesson for all of us and you don't have to have your own podcast to learn that lesson yeah there's a I read this book on podcasting interviewing when I first started in one of the big piece of advices if you share more about yourself you'll hear more stories that they can share they'll feel more vulnerable not that I think about that but that's in my that's in my head sometimes yeah well you do a good job of it even if it's just intuitive appreciate it let's talk about another version of on the spot talking which is giving feedback oftentimes people listening to this podcast they're asked what do you think of this design what do you think is road map what do you think is strategy what are some tips for getting better at on the spot feedback first and foremost we need to look at and Define feedback uh feedback to me is an opportunity to problem solve certainly there are some behaviors that we absolutely have to shut down it's inappropriate it's inexcusable we have to shut it down but often feedback is really an opportunity to problem solve and if you take it as an opportunity to problem solve then what you're looking for is collaboration with the other person which means that we have to invite them to join us as we do this so it's not me bestowing upon you my opinion it's me inviting you to together work on whatever this issue challenge is that we have and I am a huge disciple of Kim Scott IAL cander I I think a what she said I really like her approach to it Kim's a friend she's actually a neighbor well she's been on the podcast by the way oh great so you know Kim and your listeners know Kim yeah she's great where I think I can add a little value to what Kim talks about and she does talk about structure but I think having the structure to package up the information to make it easier to digest by your audience the person or people you're talking to but also to formulate your thoughts can help and we've already talked about one mechanism one structure for feedback it's what so what now what so imagine Lenny you and I come out of a meeting and you say hey bat how'd that go I could say I thought the meeting went really well Lenny except when you talked about the implementation plan you spoke a little quicker than you did with the other parts and you didn't go into the same level of detail that's my what when you speak quickly without a lot of detail people might think you're not as prepared or you're really concerned about this part that's the so what next time I suggest you slow down and you include these two three bits of data so that people see you really are knowledgeable on this area so that's the now what so that what so what now what helps me very quickly structure information and package it in a way that helps me as The Giver of the feedback think through what are the things I need to say I need to think through what's bothering me what what it is I think you what what the consequences are of that behavior and then what I think you should do there's a more robust structure I talk about in the book called the four eyes and each ey stands for something starting with the letter i but four eyes is also like glasses it helps you see more clearly so in the four ey structure the first eye is information you're just setting the the playing field so the person knows what you're giving the feedback about the second is impact and this is impact on you the feedback Giver the third is the invitation that you make and then the final is the the implications or Consequences so imagine I have an employee who doesn't show up to the meetings on time and prepared I might say this is the third time that you have showed up late to this meeting I feel you're not prioritizing this meeting the same way others of us are what can we do to help make sure you show up prepared for the next meeting because if you do we're going to finish the project on time and get a new cool project so information impact invitation and implications now certainly I can vary the tone and and the directness of some of those responses so it sounds very differently but thinking through in my mind I have to level set what we're talking about I have to share why it's important to me at least make the invitation and talk about the benefits or or Consequences makes a lot of sense so there are lots of structures and lots of ways to communicate especially in feedback find one or two that work for you so when you're put on the spot you can default to it maybe a big takeaway here is pick one of these structures that you want to use when somebody asks you for feedback and then to you shared her what so what now what or these four eyes information give information show the impact that it had on you off invitation and then implications that's correct yeah okay let's talk about another category which is not a work category but I suck at toasts and I'm always trying to get better at this and you have a bunch of awesome advice for how to give better toasts can you share some stuff yeah so we have all been victimized by bad toasts you know the the toast that goes on too long the toast that's more about the person giving the toast than than the event or the person and when I say toast I don't just mean it weddings Bar Mitzvah Keras you know we give tributes at work all the time congratulations to the team or somebody's anniversary or somebody's retirement so we give toast and tributes all the time in fact I heard a statistics one statistic once that it is the most frequent public speaking event across people is giving toasts and tributes so we should learn how to do these well so I have an acronym it works it's called what wh a so the the W stands for why are we here now if I'm at a wedding I don't have to tell the audience why we're here we get it but if we're doing an all hands and I'm called up to speak it might be in my best interest to share with everybody I'm here to celebrate the release of this product that that team put out right so so you might have to say why are we here the H is how are you connected to the event so if I'm at a wedding people might not know who I am I could say hey I've known the groom for 25 years people like oh okay now that makes sense if you're giving a tribute at work you don't have to say and I'm the boss everybody knows your your position so again these are choices you make so why are we here how are you connected the a stands for anecdote tell a story or a quick example that is relevant and accessible to everybody uh there's no Insight or knowledge and keep it concise and then ultimately the last part is the Gratitude the thank you so so Express gratitude express some kind of thanks in a in a toast at a celebratory event you might say cheers or whatever is appropriate for the culture you come from to Signal closure but again what why are we here how are you connected anecdote or two and then the Gratitude or thinking at the end and if you follow that structure it can navigate just like a GPS your way through the toast this is such an easy structure to remember yeah there's so much of it that I love what I understand is where do you put the actual content of the tribute and the toast is it like the anecdote expands into hero what I want to say like there's an example or story and then it's like exactly so it's it's typically part of that you might you might do it in as part of the why we're all here we're here to really celebrate the herculian effort of the the this particular team to get this product launched I'm so honored uh to have supported it I'm the manager of the team here's a story about how Lenny worked overtime to get this done let's raise our glasses and give them a salute so yes you can do it in in why are we here or or through the anecdotes okay and I know one of your other piece of advice which connects to what you just said is be brief yes yes so I I you nobody has ever complained about a toast that's too brief I'm sure it's possible uh but but the complaints the majority of complaints are the toast went on forever do you find that it would ever make sense to give a couple anecdotes or make a couple points in a toast yeah and it depends it depends you know toasts are opportunities for teaching and learning as as well especially in a work environment so it might make sense to tell a couple anecdotes I'm a huge fan I mean your listeners know you know minimally viable product design Agile development really critical what is it about it's about understanding your audience your users and it's about rapidly prototyping and iterating I believe in minimally viable communication a trademark pending right uh where where you're you it's the same principles right know your audience put together a a rough draft of what want to say test it out so if you're going to give a big toast in front of a company all's hands run it by a few people and say is it too many anecdotes would it benefit from having another story get people's feedback we are not the best judges of our communication so uh the answer is yes but test it out another element of a great toast that you recommend is to be emotional can you touch on that well so emotion connects with people and as long as it's genuine and authentic it's really important um I've been thinking a lot about emotion and communication my my father recently passed away and I gave I you know everybody in my family said well Matt's going to do the eulogy I mean I it was like I no choice because what do I do I'm the guy who who teaches communication so I felt added pressure not only to honor my father's life but like everybody's like this is the way you do a eulogy and so I wanted to do some research on what's all the advice out there on eulogies and there there wasn't a lot so I actually wrote an article on on my experience and you know hopefully it'll help people but the point is in those circumstances where there's a lot of emotion it's important because it connects to the audience it's it makes it human but sometimes the emotion can get in the way for you as a communicator imagine giving I mean I I was very concerned that my emotion would cover up or overshadow the honoring I was trying to do with my father but the same thing can happen in in any kind of toast situation so think about emotion emotion is a tool to use the best way to convey emotion in a toast is through the anecdotes you use the an reveal the emotion uh it's one thing to say I am so sad it's another thing to tell a story that is sad uh I was very fortunate to interview uh for my podcast coming up soon a one panel cartoonist so she has to create everything in one panel and her advice is don't tell show and and that you know so don't tell somebody you're angry show that you're angry in the panel she writes so showing the emotion through story and anecdote is the way to do it have you had Matthew dicks on your podcast I so it is so funny I have not and I want to his name comes up more than anybody else's uh and I know of his work and his advice so I might ask you to connect absolutely I was I thought of him as you were talking because yeah he does a he helps people create their eulogy ahead of time before somebody passes away before you get really emotional you have to rush it so that's one of his Services is he helps you write eulogies for people yeah yeah no I'd love an introduction his work is very influential absolutely he's amazing uh well link to his episode about storytelling okay let me talk about a couple more uh Q&A getting better at question answer on at the end of a talk whether it's on the spot or not again I I always start with approach many of us see Q&A as threatening or challenging and in fact we need to see Q&A is an opportunity it's an opportunity to extend expand connect learn even in the most hostile of situations where people are really coming at you with a lot of spice or hot and heavy you can get a lot of value out of it so we have to come the approaches these questions are opportunities we have to make sure that we take the question in without interrupting or over validating the question I have two pet peeves about Q&A sessions one is saying good question to every question and two at the end of answering the question saying does that make sense because in both cases you're trying to validate the asker when you say good question you're also trying to buy yourself time and there are other ways to do that uh and at the end when you say does that make sense you've got a laudable goal in mind which is I want to did I answer your question right but I'd much rather you say did I answer your question can I tell you more do you have a follow-up question because if you keep saying does does that make sense does that make sense people are gonna start thinking maybe he doesn't make sense because he's always asking so some pet peeves there once the question comes in and you have to answer it I have yet another structure this structure is related to the what so what now stru now what structure it's called called add for adding value you answer the question cleanly and concisely you then give an example to reinforce the answer and then you explain the relevance or significance of the answer so people know it would you mind uh role playing an example of this with me Lenny absolutely okay imagine you're hiring me you're a hiring manager and I'm I'm interviewing to be a um what I do for my day job I I I'm a lecturer at Stanford's business school teach strategic communication you so happen to have a position open for a strategic communication lecturer I show up what is a reasonable question you would ask that doesn't just have a yes no answer um so so wait so you're interviewing for a role to be a lecturer in my school and yes you're you're the dean you get to hire me yeah it's a reasonable question I mean you could ask a super hard one but I want people to hear how add works this may be too simple but just how many how many students have you worked with and taught over the years okay so I'm going to morph that question because I I could just say thousands which is true but I'm going to turn it into a question about experience because really what you're asking me is what's my experience so because that I can give an add answer to if it's just a numeric answer just give a number so I might say I've been doing this for 25 years and I have taught over thousands of students I've taught both at the academic in the academic world but also in the the corporate world what this means is is I can tailor my material to be relevant and useful to your students so I answer the question the question was what's your experience 25 years thousands of students I then give an example I've done this in the corporate world I've done this in the academic world so I I grounded in some some something tangible and then I show showare the relevance what this means for you as a Dean hiring me is that I'm going to be able to tailor my experience we often assume that people can connect the dots if I give my answer you're going to see oh that's why this is relevant and important but we need to actually connect those dots for our audience I had a psychology professor once who said the funny thing about common sense is it's not so common and we often make the assumption that that people will connect the dots so answer the question give a detailed example and then explain the relevance and if you do that it will help and I challenge every one of your listeners working in companies that have FAQs frequently asked questions go back to those FAQs and put them in this structure not only will it help you digest and get familiar and comfortable with the structure anybody looking at those answers begins to see that this is the way to give a complete answer this is how our organization answers questions and that can be so helpful to building consistency and helping yourself answer better just to clarify the acronym is ADD add answer detailed example describe the relevance describe the relevance I see how you snuck that D in there yeah yeah yeah you're like what that yeah I mean you can come up with whatever acronym you want that helps you remember add because it adds value awesome okay it maybe a one last Quick one apologizing what's a couple tips for getting better at apologizing on the spot yeah so first and formost we we need to take the time to apologize many of us don't and when we apologize we we need to make sure that we apologize for the transgression and not for how we made people feel so often people will will simply say I'm sorry that you feel bad well that's not an apology that that that's you're you're not assuming responsibility so we we need to first start by by talking about the the issue that we are addressing uh or the the problem that we uh cause somebody so we need to think about uh apologies in that way so an apology to me I have uh triaa like roadside uh repair service here in the United States triaa uh it's three steps acknowledge appreciate and amend so I have to acknowledge what I did so imagine we're in a meeting and I interrupted you you were in the midst of speaking and I interrupted you so I might say I'm very sorry for interrupting what you were saying I overp when you were talking that's my I'm acknowledging what I did then I appreciate I can imagine my doing that made you feel bad and and you feel that you didn't get your fair share of sharing your point of view next time so that's the the appreciation the amends part is I will work not to do this in fact I will wait till you're done and I will actually paraphrase what you said before I contribute my point so I'm signaling I understand it and here's the very specific thing I'm going to do to try to remedy it which of course you can comment on you can say no I don't think that's enough I think you whatever or thank you that I think that's even more than it's needed whatever so you acknowledge the actual behavior in offense not how you made the person feel right away you then Express appreciation for the difficulty you might have caused and then you make amends and the AAA approach I think can really be helpful to people to be better at in the moment apologizing amazing Matt I think we've packed this episode with so many tactical golden nuggets to help people become better communicators especially on the spot is there anything else you want to share or leave listeners with before I ask you how they can find you online and things like that so again I want to go back to how we started the second part about spontaneous speaking everybody can get better at communication and I I encourage I challenge people to take the step steps that they need to take to do it so it starts with initiative it's followed by grace and and Compass self-compassion it takes time but in so doing you can improve your communication and help others right it's not just about you finding your voice it's about you sharing that voice with others so taking the time to work on your communication is critically important and I encourage everybody to do so all right I'm hoping people follow that advice and if not think back to what we talked about at the beginning of just how much impact doesn't have and how many people are also going through the same challenges you're probably feeling speaking and being on the spot all right work can folks find your podcast your book and also how can listeners be useful to you oh I love that last question so uh Matt Abrahams Doom great place to go to to find things so at Matt abrams.com you'll find a whole bunch of resources my own and others I've curated a bunch of resources you can find think fast talk smart wherever you get podcasts and on YouTube uh and then the book think faster talk Mar is available everywhere I'm a huge user of LinkedIn and to answer that last question you asked I invite people to connect on LinkedIn I'd love to hear their stories and find ways to to collaborate awesome and your podcast is ranked higher than this podcast you're in a different category which is a very competitive category the business category I've moved myself to the technology category which feels more natural to me yes but your podcast is killing it so congrats thank you for sharing your wisdom with us um that's it Matt thank you again for being here uh great pleasure to have the conversation with you Lenny I enjoyed it thoroughly same bye everyone thank you so much for listening if you found this valuable you can subscribe to the show on Apple podcast Spotify or your favorite podcast app also please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review as that really helps other listeners find the podcast you can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at Lenny podcast.com see you in the next episode good