Think Fast Talk Smart: Communication Techniques - 298. Quick Thinks: How to Look Confident, Composed, and Credible

Episode Date: June 18, 2026

The nonverbal habits that make you look confident, composed, and authentic before you even speak.How you carry yourself can shape how others perceive your confidence, credibility, and authenticity—often before you say a word. In this Quick Thinks episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, Matt Abrahams shares practical, research-backed techniques for strengthening your presence through body language, posture, gestures, and eye contact. Learn how to stand and sit with confidence, move with purpose, use your hands effectively, and avoid common nonverbal habits that can distract from your message. Whether you're presenting to an audience, leading a meeting, or navigating everyday conversations, these simple strategies can help you communicate with greater composure and impact. Episode Reference Links:Ep.12 It's Not What You Say, It’s How You Say It: How To Communica…Ep.137 When Words Aren't Enough: How to Excel at Nonverbal Communication  Connect:Premium Signup >>>> Think Fast Talk Smart PremiumEmail Questions & Feedback >>> [e-mail] Transcripts >>> Think Fast Talk Smart WebsiteNewsletter Signup + English Language Learning >>> FasterSmarter.ioThink Fast Talk Smart >>> LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTubeMatt Abrahams >>> LinkedIn Chapters:(00:00) - Introduction (01:59) - Be Big, Balanced, and Still (02:53) - The Right Speaking Stance (03:38) - Moving with Purpose (04:29) - Presence While Seated (05:15) - What to Do with Your Hands (06:00) - Gesturing Beyond Your Shoulders (08:29) - Effective Eye Contact (09:14) - Thinking While Speaking (09:59) - Bringing It All Together (10:46) - Practice Through Recording (11:32) - Conclusion ********Thank you to our sponsors.  These partnerships support the ongoing production of the podcast, allowing us to bring it to you at no cost.Strawberry.me. Get 50% off your first coaching session today at Strawberry.me/smart

Hi, Matt here. Ever struggle at a networking event? Well, then our June newsletter is just for you. You can learn best practices for better networking and about all the exciting things we're doing. Check out our June newsletter. Available now on LinkedIn and on FasterSmarter.io under resources, now a word from our sponsors. Their support covers the cost of production, allowing us to bring you this episode free of charge. Strawberry.me makes coaching more accessible, affordable, and global, connecting you with a coach who's the right fit for you. I've had the privilege of working with some truly great coaches, and I've also spent many years coaching others. And I can tell you firsthand, coaching makes a real difference. The challenge is that coaching has often felt out of reach for a lot of people.

It can be expensive, difficult to access, or something people assume is only for senior executives. That's why I really appreciate what strawberry.me is doing. Growth shouldn't depend on whether you happen to have access to the right mentor or organization. Everyone deserves support in becoming more effective, more thoughtful, and more confident in how they show up. Visit strawberry.comme slash smart and take 50% off your first session. Make sure you let them know Matt sent you. That's strawberry.combe slash smart. And now back to our conversation.

Your presence at times can speak louder than your words. My name is Matt Abrams, and I teach strategic communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to this quick-thinks episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. Today I'd like to walk you through best practices for helping you to make sure you convey confidence and authenticity in your communication. The goal here is not to make everyone communicate the same way, but rather to introduce you to fundamental best practices based on academic research that can inform what you do with your body and your voice. The very first thing people see about you is how you hold your body. Three rules to follow. You want to make sure that you are big, balanced, and still. What I mean by that is you want to pull your shoulder blades back

so that you extend your chest. We're not pulling our elbows back. We're not puffing out our chest, but we pull our elbows down and shoulders down. Allow your hands to drop down by your side. This way you look very big. Now we want to make sure our head is straight as well. Many of us tilt our head or we lean when we communicate. We want to be still and balanced. To make sure we're still, we have to think about our feet.

Many of us when we stand, we stand with our feet facing out to a 45-degree angle, like a penguin or a duck. This actually opens up our hips. If you've done any dance, yoga, or martial arts, you know that having your feet out like this makes it easy and flexible for you to move. The problem is, when you're standing up and speaking, we don't want to be swaying from side to side.

It can be very distracting. For my Stanford MBA students, when they have to do a big assignment, we'll digitally record them and I make them watch their recording without sound on 2x speed, and they see themselves swaying in the wind. How do we fix this? We take our feet and we make sure they're parallel underneath our shoulders. We put one foot slightly in front of the other, and maybe even come up on our tiptoes and settle down.

That pulls the weight forward. So with our shoulders pulled down, our arms by our side, our head straight, and our feet parallel with our weight forward, we are in the starting position for communication when you're standing. Any sport you have ever played has an initial starting stance. This is the starting stance for public speaking. If you're being introduced, if you're speaking with a team and you're standing while someone else is speaking, this is how you hold your body.

Now, of course, you'll move around if you're standing. I recommend stepping in towards the beginning of a communication. so step towards your audience with a broad gesture. That makes you look very confident and welcoming. If somebody has a question or some feedback, step towards them in an open, neutral way, again, making you look confident. And when you transition from one idea to the next,

physically move your body a few steps and land back into this ready position. Now, often when you communicate, you're not standing. You're seated. Same things apply. Pull your shoulder blades down. make sure your head is straight. Keep your feet flat on the ground.

A lot of us, when we sit, we flex our legs a lot and bounce around. You can see that reflected in your shirt. And have your forearms on the table. We like to see people's hands. Speaking of hands, what do we do with these things? It's the number one question I get asked when I teach people nonverbal presence.

I've already shared one place for them, and that's down by your side. It took me a long time, years to be comfortable talking with my hands down by. my side. For many of us, it's much more comfortable when we stand to put our hands right at our belly button. We want to avoid being too low. This looks a little defensive, if you get what I mean, and we want to avoid our hands being up too high. This makes us look like we're praying not to get hurt. So placing your hands right at your belly button, palm on palm, interlacing the fingers,

or even lightly steepling or nice places to rest your hands. We want to avoid doing anything that's distracting or tentative with our hands. We don't want to just hold the finger. We don't want to crack our knuckles. We want to avoid playing with rings. And we don't want to do the heartbeat. Nice and neutral. So hands are either down by our side or right at our abdomen. When you gesture, I have just one rule. Go beyond your shoulders. Many of us, when we're nervous, we gesture in tight between our shoulders. How does it look if I say, here at our company, we have a very open and embracing culture. Really? Instead, I should say, here at our company, we have an open and embracing culture. Just going a little bit beyond your shoulders makes you look open. I like to tell people,

think of your chest as a basketball key. If you know the rules of basketball, you can be in the key for three seconds without getting a penalty. So I might say this is really important to all of you and me, and then I return to my neutral place. If I'm seated, I simply have a lot of you. I'm seated, I simply have my forearms on the table, and when I gesture, I gesture beyond my shoulders, and my arms come back. We'll be right back to finish our conversation, but first a quick word from one of our sponsors. Their support allows us to bring you this show free of charge. This episode is sponsored by Squarespace.

One lesson I've learned from years of teaching communication is that expertise alone isn't enough. People need a way to discover your ideas, understand your work, and engage with what you have to offer. Effective communication doesn't end when the conversation is over. People need a place to learn more, explore your work, and stay connected with what you're creating. Squarespace makes it easy to build a professional online presence that reflects who you are. Their design tools make it simple to create a website that looks polished and professional without needing technical expertise. And if you create courses, premium content, or memberships,

Squarespace gives you ways to offer that directly through your site. Head to Squarespace.com slash TFTS for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use code TFTS to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. If you enjoyed my recent conversation with Gene and Sherry from the Tiger Sisters podcast, I think you'll really love their show. They take big and sometimes complicated ideas around money, power, and love, and turn them into clear, practical tools you can apply right away. Two fun facts.

I coach Sherry for her TEDx talk, and I had the chance to join them on their show. They ask great questions and bring a perspective you don't always hear. New episodes drop every Monday on their YouTube channel and across all audio platforms. And now, back to our conversation. The final thing we need to talk about is what do we do with our eye contact? We need to make sure that when we communicate,

we look at the audience that we're speaking. to. I am always asked, how long should I look at somebody? And I wish I had a good answer. Long enough, but not too long. Some people will say one idea per person. I struggle with that just because one idea might be longer for one person than another. I recommend spreading your eye contact around, but not in a patterned way. How would it look if I just kept looking across the audience like this? A little strange. So if you have a lot of large enough audience, let's say eight or more, create quadrants of the area you're speaking in. Maybe I look in the back corner, then I'm here in the front, and then maybe over here.

If it's a smaller group, certainly try to look at each person. Many of us, when we're trying to think about what comes next, we will often look up because looking at people's faces is one of the most drawn things that we do. We're so motivated to learn about what's on people's faces. It's really hard to think and take in all that information. So it's very tempting to look up in a way. Unfortunately, when I look up in a way, people see me as being distant, maybe nervous, not wanting to be there.

It is better to look down than look up. When I look down, I look thoughtful and pensive. When I look up, I look confused. So train yourself if you have to take a moment to look down and then start again. A great way to do this is to move. Often when we need to think about what we want to say next is during points of transition in our content. And as I mentioned earlier, a great thing to do when you're transitioning ideas is to move laterally side to side. So as I move, I might look down and walk. It's very normal to look down as you walk. So it looks completely natural.

So taken together, when we work on our presence, just our physicality, what we do with our body, we can actually have a big impact on how people perceive us. Again, we want to be big balance and still. Pull the shoulder blades down, have the arms to the side. Head is straight and our feet are parallel. When we gesture, we gesture beyond our shoulders and we come to a neutral resting place, either right in front of our abdomen or down by our side. And when we make eye contact, we look around in a non-patterned way.

Taken together, these skills will help you look confident and be composed while you're communicating. The single best tool to help you with this is to digitally record yourself practicing. And when you watch, turn the volume down so you can see how you actually look and how others will perceive you. In so doing, you will begin to improve your presence. Thank you for joining us for this Quick Thinks episode of Think Fast Talk Smart, the podcast. To learn more about presence, please listen to Episode 12 with Dev Grunfeld and episode 137 with Dana Carney. This episode was produced by Catherine Reed, Ryan Campos, and meet Matt Abrahams. Our music is from Floyd Wonder with special thanks to Podium Podcast Company.

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If these takeaways were helpful, I'd love for you to listen to the full episode that started this conversation. There's more context, more stories, and more tools to support your communication. Give it a listen. And as always, thanks for your support. Before we wrap up, I just want to say thank you for listening. It really means a lot to hear how people all over the world are using these ideas in their own lives. It inspires me and the whole team that brings you this show. If you want more episodes and resources, feel free to follow, subscribe, and explore past conversations.

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