3 Takeaways - What Great Communicators Do Differently (#325)

Episode Date: October 27, 2026

What separates great communicators from everyone else? It’s not confidence, charisma, or having the perfect words.Matt Abrahams, Stanford Graduate School of Business lecturer, bestselling author of Think Faster, Talk Smarter, and host of the Think Fast, Talk Smart podcast, reveals why many of our instincts before presentations, meetings, and difficult conversations may be working against us.In this episode, we cover:The best way to introduce yourselfHow to interrupt someone politelyWhat to do in the final five minutes before an important presentationWhy memorizing a speech can actually make you worseWhat Matt means when he tells people to “dare to be dull”How to respond to criticism How great communicators listen, ask questions, and make others feel heard.Matt’s central message: great communication isn't about perfection. It's about connection.

Why can trying to be interesting actually make us less interesting? Hi, everyone. I'm Lynn Toman, and this is three takeaways. On three takeaways, I talk with some of the world's best thinkers, business leaders, writers, writers, politicians, newsmakers, and scientists. Each episode ends with three key takeaways to help us understand the world and maybe even ourselves a little better. Today I'm delighted to be with Matt Abrams. Matt teaches communication at Stanford's Graduate School of Business, and he's the author of Think Faster, Talk Smarter, and host of Stanford's Think Fast Talk Smart podcast. Matt has spent years studying how we can speak with more confidence, think on our feet, and communicate better.

And that's exactly what he'll help us do today. Matt, welcome to three takeaways. Lynn, I am thrilled to be with you. Thanks for having me here. It is my pleasure, Matt. Matt, you teach communication at Stanford, and yet you have told me that you still get nervous before speaking. What does that tell us about confidence?

I think anxiety is just part of the human condition. We all, I believe, are hardwired to be nervous when we are doing high-stakes communicating. It helps us focus. It gives us energy, but it can also get in the way. And we see it across all cultures that have been studied. We see it tend to develop around the same time in children when they're growing into their early teens. The anxiety really takes hold and continues, which isn't to say that we can't learn to manage it. Really speaking in front of others is high stakes. And learning how to manage it can make a big difference in your personal and professional life. So what should we do when we get really nervous? When it comes to managing anxiety, I like to focus on two different sides of the equation. They're the symptoms and the sources. So Lynn, when you get nervous speaking in front of others, and I'm sure there are times when you do, what happens to you physically?

For me, I blush and I sweat. What happens for you? My heartbeat picks up. Yes. Pounds in your chest. Both what I experience and you experience are normal and natural. Your body sees what you are doing. as a threat. And as such, it invokes fight or flight. Your heart beats faster so you have more oxygen

so you can run away or fight. You turn red and blush because your heart's beating faster and your body's tensing up. It's like when we exercise, we get hotter and we sweat. These are normal and natural and the things we can do. So, for example, in your case, Lynn, deep belly breathing is the best thing you can do to slow down your heart rate. And what's interesting is it's not the inhalation that counts. It's the exhale. So I like to joke the rule of lung, not the rule of thumb, is to take a three count in and a six count out. If you do that two or three times, your heart rate will slow down, your respiration rate will slow down. You won't feel it as much. And you'll speak more slowly. The faster we breathe, the faster we speak. Now, the other part has to do with

the sources of anxiety. What causes it in the first place? The one I always start with is when people communicate, they want to do it right. They want to be perfect. I am here to tell you, Lynn, there is no right way to communicate. I've been doing this a long, long time. There are better ways and worse ways, but no one right way. And when you take the pressure off of yourself of doing it right and just focus on getting it done, you free up cognitive resources to do it well. So I tell my students, the people I coach, the people that listen to Think Fast Talk Smart all the time. I say, it's about connection, not perfection. If you focus on connection, to your audience and worrying less about getting it exactly right, you will be a better

communicator in one who's less nervous. I completely agree with you with not trying to get it perfect. What helps me is to think about the upside, the positive, how interesting it will be, or how interesting it could be. And that for me really helps me rather than focusing on what could go wrong. I love that technique. What you're doing is what's called cognitive reframing. You're seeing the situation as an opportunity where something's exciting can happen versus as a challenge or a gauntlet or something that you're being judged at. So that reframing is really helping you, and I applaud you for using it. What do most people misunderstand about being a good communicator? First, it's not about you. It's about your audience. A lot of us focus on us and what we want to

say, be it spoken or written. It's really about what our audience needs. The best communication is relevant and salient for our audience. So we have to be focused on them. The second thing is listening. Many of us, when we think about communication, we think again about broadcast, what we're saying, what we're writing. But in fact, the best communicators are really good at listening. Listening allows you to absorb, to reflect, to actually understand how your communication is landing. So if you can be audience-centric and really invest in your listening, you will improve your communication tremendously. When we're put on the spot, what do most of us instinctively do wrong?

People say, I'm just not good at this spontaneous stuff, you know, small talk, answering questions. That's just not my cup of tea. Wasn't born with the gift of gab. So the first mistake is that we think we can't do it. In fact, we can't. It's just like any skill. You can learn to be better at speaking spontaneously. But you have to practice.

And then the second thing people get wrong is they focus. a lot on having to respond right away. I have to immediately answer the question, give you the feedback, apologize for the mistake. You can actually buy yourself a little time. There's no urgency. You could say, let me think about that for a moment. Or I could ask you a clarifying question. Or I could even paraphrase what you said. All of those by that time. So if you realize it's a skill you can develop and you work on it and you can buy yourself a little bit of time, all the sudden the threatened challenge that speaking in the moment brings is reduced. Oh, I love that idea of paraphrasing to give you a moment to think about what to say. That's really

practical. I liked how you paraphrased what I said as part of what you said. That was great. Matt, I am learning from you as we speak. You have some surprising advice. Dare to be dull. What do you mean? Dare to be dull is something that I learned from my many colleagues who do and teach improvisation. And they've taught me a lot of really valuable skills that come from improv. When we put so much pressure on ourselves to do it right, to be perfect, to be memorized, we actually reduce our ability to do it well at all. Think of it this way. Your brain is like a computer. You know when you have a laptop or a tablet or your phone has lots of windows and apps open all at the same time, each one of those is performing less well because the others are open. They're all sucking a little bit of

that precious CPU bandwidth. Your brain is the same way. If I memorize what I want to say, I've just created the right way to say it. And as I'm speaking, I'm also comparing what I'm saying to what I meant to say. So I'm splitting that cognitive bandwidth, which means I have less to focus on the connection that I want and need to have. So when you dare to be dull, you're really saying to yourself, just do it, just get it done, bare minimum. And when you do that, you actually free up a tremendous amount of cognitive resources to do it really, really well. Why does trying to sound smart so often make us worse communicators? Part of it is because we're in our heads really trying to think about what is smart,

what's the big word I can use that it would impress people. That's all internal. Communication, as I've said, is all about connection. The word communication comes from the root to make common. It's about connecting with others. It's about co-creating with others. So anything that pulls us in our head, like wanting to be smart or wanting to be liked or wanting to be funny, actually distances us from that goal of making common. You say the secret to conversation is to be interested rather than interesting.

How do you do that without making someone feel like they're being interrogated? It certainly can go that way. There are lots of ways to signal interest that aren't just barraging someone. with questions. For example, I might nonverbally nod as you're speaking or do what's called a back channel go, hmm, oh, so I am signaling that I'm interested in what you're saying. Similarly, I might, when you're done speaking, ask you to tell me more. So I'm not asking a question. I'm just saying, oh, that's really interesting. Tell me more about that. So there are lots of ways to signal interests that aren't just rapid machine gun questioning, which can certainly

feel like you're being interrogated. So there are lots of paints on the palette that signal interest use lots of different paints. And what do great listeners do that most of us don't? I think paraphrasing to signal that I've heard you. When you paraphrase, you do two things. And let me be very clear. When I say paraphrase, paraphrase is not parrot back word for word. That's annoying. That's what a young child does. Paraphrasing is where you listen for the crux, the core of what somebody said, the bottom line, and then you rephrase it yourself. And when you do this, you do two things. You validate that you heard the person. And that feels good. When you do paraphrase, you actually begin to foster trust in deeper relationships. The other thing paraphrasing does is it's a fidelity check.

Fidelity is the F word of communication, not the naughty one. It's all about accuracy. So if you ask me a question, and I answer the question that you really didn't ask because I didn't understand it, then I'm not helping you and I'm doing myself a disservice as well. So if I paraphrase, you can say, no, no, no, Matt, what I meant was this. So it increases the accuracy and fidelity and make sure that my communication hits the mark. So good listeners are people who are present and paraphrase. And AI chatbots can be even better at that. They can be 100% focused on you and they can And paraphrase, they can sound like they're listening, they can sound like they're validating you. How do you think about a chatbot versus a real person interaction?

I believe AI has the tremendous potential to help us be better communicators. It also has some alarming qualities to it as well. So we have to find a good balance for us. Let me share one example. I believe that there is an empathy paradox that comes with AI, with a. chatbot. In one sense, it can really enhance our empathy. So let's say I'm preparing to be interviewed by you, Lynn. I can study all of your other episodes, read up on you, and I can say to the chatbot, I'm going to be interviewing with Lynn. And she seems to like questions that are really thoughtful

and introspective. Give me three or four potential questions that Lynn might ask so I can practice. So all of a sudden, like a boxer or an athlete, I have a sparring partner. I can test out ideas. Wonderful way, I think, to use AI. However, if I take a lot of you. the most difficult, challenging communication situations, giving constructive feedback, laying somebody off, breaking up with a romantic partner. If I just have the AI create those messages and I don't do it, then I think we end up with empathy atrophy where empathy is a muscle. You have to work it. You have to think through it. If you think about it, communication is the end stop of a long process of critical thinking, planning, empathy. And if we short circuit all of that, just

to get to the message, we're doing ourselves a disservice because we're not building those skills. And ultimately, we're doing the other people a disservice because if they ask us a follow-up question, we have no depth because we haven't actually thought through things. So AI can be a wonderful tool. It can also jeopardize part of what I think makes us human, which is empathy. Matt, most people think that interrupting is rude. What's a good way to interrupt someone? Interrupting can actually be a very valuable tool.

if you are facilitating a meeting, if you're in a Q&A session where people are asking questions and people are taking up too much space air time, interrupting can be a necessary thing to do. If I'm leading a meeting and somebody is dominating, that means others aren't contributing. And those others likely aren't going to ask that person to stop talking. So I believe another added benefit of paraphrasing is it is the most polite way I know to interrupt somebody. So interesting. And a more general way to do it would be to say something. something like, that's so interesting and then go on from there. I do think naming what is interesting actually adds a little bit of extra value. So the emotional reward, I think, is great. But I think if you can just go one step further and say,

it's really interesting how you brought up that point on X and then move forward. What's the worst communication advice that people still follow? Memorize. Memorize your talk. It'll help you. That gets people into so much trouble. The people who blank out the most are the people who memorize the most. And it comes down to that cognitive load.

I am constantly working with people to avoid memorizing. And rather than have a script, have a structure. A structure is a roadmap, a path, at a beginning, a middle, and an end. If you know the map, you can get from one place to the other rather easily. That makes sense. Otherwise, you're so focused on trying to remember what it is that you had memorized. What's one habit that you believe we should all? start tomorrow? I'd start tonight. Reflection. The only way you get better at communication is

three things. Repetition, reflection, and feedback. You have to practice. No athlete got good without practice. No musician, no actor. You have to practice. You have to reflect. You know that definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results? That's how people communicate. Every night before I go to bed, I journal, I've journaled forever. And I will write one thing that went well in my communication that day and one thing that I'd like to improve. And then every Sunday evening, I review the previous week and I come up with a plan for the following week. And then finally, you need to get feedback from others. So if people could take the time to practice, take the time to reflect, get feedback from others, their communication will improve,

absolutely. Feedback is so hard to get. Nobody wants to give you any kind of negative feedback, even if in a constructive way. How do you get it? What you really want is advice. Advice is prospective. And people tend to be more comfortable giving advice versus giving feedback. First and foremost, ask for advice. So I could say, hey, Lynn, on a scale of 1 to 10, how is this interview? And you might come back and say, I've interviewed a lot of famous people, a lot of really important people. I'd say, okay, give me advice on what would it take to get me from an 8 to a 9?

And do you see how the specificity of the ask of that advice is likely to get you very actionable things that you can do? It is so easy for you to say, you know, how'd that go? And it's great, right? Because then I don't have to take the risk of giving you constructive feedback. So if you ask for advice, you anchor the advice. So you said I was an eight. I want to be a nine.

I want to be a 10. What do I need to do? That brings you with me to solve this problem that I'm trying to improve as a podcast guest. Yeah. I really like asking people for advice because they respond in a positive way. And it's much better than getting feedback. which tends to be more negative. So I agree with that.

And I'm amusing you're one out of 10. My basic reference question is always on a 1 to 10 scale. Where do you place someone where 10 is outstanding? Absolutely. Yep. Very good. We are in sync today, Lynn. We are absolutely in sync.

Matt, someone says something that you strongly disagree with. How do you tell them they're wrong without immediately making them defensive? I believe in owning it. I feel not you made me. So I feel a little out of shape or I feel a little hurt by some of the things that you said. So own the feeling. Start by naming what it is. That comment you made at the beginning of the meeting.

So we're all talking about the same thing. Focus. Made me feel or think and explain that. And then if there's an ask, invite the other person to help you. together solve the problem. I think when we have conflict, it's really about inviting the other person to with us solve the problem. Name it, explain what it meant for you, and then make some kind of invitation through a

question or something else to have the person come with you to help address the problem. Matt, what else should I have asked you that I have not? One of the ways in which we communicate is through nonverbals, what we do with our bodies in our voices. And that's a really important part of communication. Just being mindful of your nonverbals as well as others and see what works for other people and what might work for you. Not to say you should copy or clone somebody. But you might notice how somebody comports themselves and say maybe I could try some part of that. But really thinking about how we say things is super important. Matt, let's do a lightning around. You walk into a party where you don't know anyone. You go up to a group

and what do you say? I would probably make an observation about something in the environment or something that we all have in common, because that way everybody can contribute to it. That's a great way to start. You've forgotten the name of the person you're talking to, and you need to introduce them to someone you know. What do you do? Come clean. I just say, I'm sorry, can you please remind me your name?

Maybe I'd try to make a joke out of it, and then I'll just take the conversation from there. Let's say your boss asks you a question in a meeting and you don't know the answer. What do you say? I immediately say, I don't know. Here's what I'm going to do to find the information out. And if you have a hunch or an inkling, say that. Make sure you do follow up. That's absolutely critical.

And then if there's some reason you believe that you have insight into the answer, then please reveal it. Someone criticizes you and you immediately feel defensive. What do you say? I always try to start from a place of gratitude. And sometimes it's really hard depending on what the criticism is. But I might say, I appreciate your opinion or thanks for taking the time to share that with me. I disagree or I'd love to learn a little bit more about why you say that. So if I can, I like to come from a place of appreciation and gratitude.

It can be really tough, especially if you're really offended. Matt, what are the three takeaways you'd like to leave the audience with today? communication is something that is critical to your success in your professional and personal life and you can and should work on it. Second, in a world where attention is the most precious commodity, you need to make sure that you are engaging. And finally, communication is about relationships. It's about emotion.

So when you go into a high-stakes communication, remind yourself that I'm also communicating emotion, not just trying to get information across. I love those takeaways, Matt. This has been wonderful. Thank you. Thank you, Lynn. Your questions are super insightful, and in some cases challenging. I enjoyed the conversation.

If you're enjoying the podcast, and I really hope you are, please review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps get the word out. If you're interested, you can also sign up for the Three Takeaways newsletter at Three Takeaways.com, where you can also listen to previous episodes. You can also follow us on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and Facebook. I'm Lynn Toman, and this is Three Takeaways. Thanks for listening.