203. No Script, No Problem: Final Secrets to Speaking Under Pressure (Bonus)

[00:00:00] Matt Abrahams: The ability to think on our feet and respond well is something we all can learn to do. My name is Matt Abrahams and I teach strategic communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to this Quick Thinks final episode of our Think Fast Talk Smart miniseries into effective, spontaneous speaking. The three episodes of this mini series that proceed this one have walked through how to prepare, how to be present and how to persist during spontaneous challenges. In our fourth episode, we now take a look at a few bonus bits of advice that can really help you to be more calm and confident when communicating in the moment.

[00:00:45] Growing up with the last name of Abrahams, I have always known what it is like to be put on the spot and have to speak spontaneously. Teachers can often be predictable. In school, I always knew where I would sit and knew that I would go first. I eventually became comfortable speaking in an impromptu way. It was a challenge, a puzzle. A tool I used back then and still used to this day is structure. Structures are frameworks, guides, roadmaps, that give you a place to begin and a place to end. They provide a logical connection of ideas. We all know frameworks. If you've ever watched a television advertisement, you've seen one at play.

[00:01:28] It's the problem, solution, benefit structure. Most advertisements start with some kind of issue or challenge in the world. Their product or service solves that issue or challenge, and you in some way benefit. I don't care if you're selling automobiles, alcohol, or medicines. Problem, solution, benefit is a very useful structure for being persuasive, especially when put on the spot. Now I have a structure that I love even more than that one. And that is three simple questions. What? So what? Now what? What is the information that you're sharing, so what is why it is important to you, and now what is what comes next. So imagine you're in a meeting and your boss turns to you and says, give me an update.

[00:02:17] You hadn't planned to present an update. What do you do? You explain what you've been working on, and then why it's important and what you intend to do next, and the plans and contingencies that you have to follow. What? So what? Now what? Imagine you come out of that meeting and a colleague turns to you and says, how'd that go? What do you think? Now you have to give feedback in the moment. Again, the structure helps. What is your feedback? I thought the meeting went well, except when you spoke about the implementation plan. You spoke quickly and you didn't give as much detail as you did elsewhere. Why is that important? Well, when you speak quickly without giving a lot of detail, people think you're nervous or unprepared.

[00:03:03] So what do we do next? The next time you present, slow down and include these two additional bits of information. By leveraging this structure in the moment, you can respond better. Whenever you speak spontaneously, you have two obligations, what you say and how you say it. Having a structure helps you with how you say it. All you have to do is think about what it is you're going to say inside the structure. You've halved your burden. You've made it easier for yourself. Now, how do you get better at structure? You have to drill it. Let me give you an example of how to improve what so what now what? Every time you're finished listening to one of our podcast episodes, or perhaps listening to or reading a book, or attending a meeting, simply ask yourself, what was it about, why is it important to me, and what can I do with this information? 

[00:03:57] By drilling that for just thirty seconds after every podcast episode, every meeting, every interaction, you train your brain to think in that way, and by doing so, it becomes easier for you to use. So now that you've heard some of my advice that I've learned over my life to help, and that is using structure, I'd like us to return back to our many coaches who we've used throughout our three episodes. If you haven't listened to those episodes, please take a moment to do so. There's a lot of valuable information. Let's listen in as our coaches each give us one bit of additional advice to help us speak better in the moment.

[00:04:37] Giampaolo, our UN interpreter coach, starts us off with one of the most important keys to successful, spontaneous speaking.

[00:04:47] Giampaolo Bianchi: One thing that helps me to think fast and talk smart is learning to trust myself. 

[00:04:52] Matt Abrahams: It's not enough just to have trust in yourself. You also have to have trust in your content. 

[00:04:58] Our next coach adds why having such self-assurance is so imperative. Peter Sagal is the host of NPRs weekly news game show, Wait, wait...Don't Tell me! Just so you know, you might hear his son in the background. Peter shares with us a reminder of what a central goal should be anytime we're speaking, but especially when we're speaking on the spot. While many of us listening are very unlikely to do what you do for a living, what advice would you give our listeners to just become better speakers in the moment?

[00:05:33] Peter Sagal: I think there are two things that, I think both difficult, but both important and maybe essential. A, confidence. We human beings are so good at reading social cues that no matter what you're saying, if you're sending out social cues of discomfort, of nervousness, that's all people are gonna pay attention to. So you have to be confident that you belong there. And the second one is kind of connected, is you have to say something of value, and that's really hard. If you're gonna be speaking to people and you do with confidence and with effect, you have to say something that you believe has value. And coming up with something about any topic that is both valuable and something that your audience has never heard before is really hard, but absolutely essential. That's the job. You have to know something they don't know. You have to have a perspective they don't have, or you have to have an insight that they haven't arrived yet. 

[00:06:31] Matt Abrahams: So to really help people be better in the moment, you have to have confidence in that moment, and you have to provide value. Two very good bits of advice.

[00:06:39] Coach Phyllis Kao is up next. She's a Sotheby's auctioneer and has a great piece of advice on keeping a good mindset. Can you share any advice you have received that has helped you do your job better that all of us might benefit from? 

[00:06:55] Phyllis Kao: I have some advice that I had to learn and teach myself the hard way, that I wish someone had told me, and this might not resonate with everyone. When you are going into a performance or a high pressure environment, you know, when you really have the pressure to perform. I was always so concerned with looking like a diva, and I would never want to ruffle feathers or change the program, change the protocol. I thought, okay, just take care of yourself. I just didn't want to be pegged as a diva, but then I found that was to my detriment in many cases. No one else knows what you need better than you do, and you know if that little voice in your head says, this will really help you, then just ask for it. 

[00:07:45] Matt Abrahams: Right. So taking care of yourself and your needs can help you be better at what you do. Part of that, I think, is the confidence and assertiveness that comes with that, but I also think part of it is if you're constantly judging and evaluating, am I coming off like a diva, am I offending? That you're not truly present because part of you is in that evaluative mode. So that's good advice. 

[00:08:07] We've talked previously in our first episode about what to do before we go into a situation where you'll be likely to speak spontaneously. And here Phyllis will share how visualization is a core part of her pre auction ritual. 

[00:08:21] Phyllis Kao: I think probably the most universally helpful aspect of it would be that I imagine myself in the auctioneers rostrum facing an audience and confidently conducting the auction with power and grace and charisma. You know, just all of the perfect elements that you'd want to embody together. 

[00:08:50] Matt Abrahams: That's fantastic. So you're visualizing success and you're visualizing how you want to be ,in so doing, it helps you become that and it helps you feel more confident. That is a technique that has been around and studied for many decades and truly does help people.

[00:09:04] NFL Referee Brad Rogers shows us how reviewing and reflecting on his performance can help him continue to improve and grow his spontaneous speaking muscles. 

[00:09:15] Brad Rogers: I review every announcement. I go through everything that I do, not only looking at what others do, but I look at everything I do and I look at it and go, did I cause more confusion? Did I cause something negative? And as I listen to other referees that help that have good communication skills, I try to implement those. You know, technology, it provides us with instantaneous opportunities for improvement. And so after a game, I have access to the game when I'm on the plane. They load it on our iPads and I go through it and I start to look and see what was the work that I did and my crew did? What was our body of work? Was it positive? Was it negative? Those types of perceptions. And I don't really sit and watch and listen to sports talk shows. 

[00:09:59] I don't wanna listen to it because most of the time they live in the land of what we might do wrong, and I don't wanna go there. I wanna look at it and evaluate it from the standpoint of, I wanna listen to other trainers and evaluators that are helping us get better. This officiating is not easy, and so I just don't allow that outside noise to take away from my focus. My focus is on, on grading feedback, every play, everything is evaluated and we work to just improve and move forward so that whenever I have interactions with coaches, the next time they hear the authentic me talking to them, this isn't something robotic. I want players and coaches to feel the effectiveness of what we're doing in a positive way.

[00:10:44] Matt Abrahams: A lot of richness in that answer. So it sounds like you are using a couple criteria to assess how well you did. Was it clear and did I add to any confusion? So as you're reviewing what others have said and yourself, you're using that reflection to help improve, and that's really, really key.

[00:11:04] Chris Voss, who is a former FBI negotiator, leaves us with yet another good reminder. Tone is really important. It's not just how you say the words, it's the emotion that you convey. 

[00:11:17] Chris Voss: One thing I do to think fast and talk smart is use an encouraging tone of voice. 

[00:11:25] Matt Abrahams: Here's our last piece of homework from our last coach, sports broadcaster and Paralympic champion, Annabelle Williams.

[00:11:32] Annabelle Williams: There's one thing that I do a lot of, and I realize I do this whenever I have a moment on my own, which is rare with small children, but you know, when I'm running I do this. If I'm sitting on the bus, I do this. I often look around or I try and be as observant as I possibly can. I try and see what's happening around me, and then if I notice something, I often think to myself, how would I create a story about that? Or if someone asked me to relay this information, what would I say? If I see something funny, I'd think, how would I tell that if I had to tell it in a story? You know, if I was on the bus going to work and we were starting with a team meeting and I'd noticed something that occurred on the bus.

[00:12:08] It was kind of funny. How would I tell that story to my team? What are the essential elements of it? What's too much information? If I phrased it this way, would it be funnier? And that helps me a lot. And then I often jot those things down. I have a, you know, it's on my phone in my notes, a series of millions of stories that I think I could use these, you know, at various points in time. I could craft it into a story for my keynote. I could do it when I'm at a dinner party telling a story. So be as observant as you possibly can at all times. You never know where you'll get a story from, and then spend the time when you're on your own thinking, how would I craft that into a really funny story or a really heartfelt story, or a really meaningful story?

[00:12:48] Matt Abrahams: Well, homework accepted. That is a great practical bit of homework, and I can see how it would help you to do what you do, right? Crafting stories in the moment based on what you're seeing, and it just echoes the things you've shared with us. This notion of focusing on the present, noticing what's going on, thinking to yourself, how can I bring a connection between what I just saw to others who might not have seen it or might not appreciate it in the same way that I do.

[00:13:18] Thank you for tuning in to this bonus Quick Thinks episode for our Spontaneous Speaking miniseries. If you haven't caught up on the previous episodes, we encourage you to go back and listen to them all. Our coaches share a lot of incredibly helpful advice you won't want to miss. This episode was produced by Aru Nair and me, Matt Abrahams. Our music is from Floyd Wonder. With special thanks to Podium Podcast Company. Please find us on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. Be sure to subscribe and rate us. Also follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram. And check out FasterSmarter.io for deep dive videos, English language learning content, and our newsletter. Please consider our premium offering for extended Deep Thinks episodes, Ask Matt Anything and more at FasterSmarter.io/premium.