220. Prep Like a Pro: Communication Confidence, Clarity, and Comedy

[00:00:00] Matt Abrahams: Communication can sometimes be chaotic, especially when setting others up for success and managing spontaneous conversations. But with a little work, we can all find composure and clarity. My name is Matt Abrahams, and I teach strategic communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to Think Fast Talk Smart, the podcast. As part of our four part miniseries on spontaneous speaking, we introduced you to a number of coaches whose jobs require successful in the moment communication. So many of our listeners found value in our coaches' advice that we wanted to provide you with an opportunity to hear our complete interviews. So today I'm excited for you to learn from Peter Sagal. Peter is a humorist writer and the longtime host of the popular NPR News quiz show, Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me. He's also an accomplished author of several books and a marathon runner. Let's jump right in and learn from Peter. Peter, welcome. I look forward to our conversation. 

[00:01:05] Peter Sagal: Well, thank you. I do too.

[00:01:06] Matt Abrahams: Should we get started?

[00:01:07] Peter Sagal: Absolutely. I, I should say for all listeners that I am here with my one and a half year old who is a very well-behaved little boy, but like all little boys of that age demands pretty constant attention. 

[00:01:18] Matt Abrahams: To start, I am a big fan of Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me, a show that is part news, part comedy, and part interview. How would you define your role as host?

[00:01:28] Peter Sagal: Hosting a show like, Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me, not something I ever trained to do. I kind of had to learn it on the fly. My first role on Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me was being one of the panelists. So there I was having been a playwright, a screenwriter, and then a panelist on the show, and now I'm the host of the show. I do not recommend going back and listening to the shows from that era in 1998 as I was learning it. My job was no longer to be funny as it had been when I was a panelist. My job was to make funny possible. I had to understand and internalize that if somebody else in the show did something, said something funny, even if I didn't say it, that was still to my credit, I had been doing my job. The second thing I had to learn was that on the radio cleverness and wit, people enjoy, but what they really wanna hear is you. My job was to be somebody and to be a part of something that people wanted to spend time with. And even once I had figured that out, was hard to do. 

[00:02:27] Matt Abrahams: I am really impressed with the, the level of reflection and introspection that you've done about your role. The notion that your job to be effective is to enable others to be effective is really important. I hear you, Peter, saying a lot that applies not just I think to radio and podcasting, but I think to communication in general. You're in service of the audience that you're speaking to, and that's that connection that gives you permission to have that communication with the audience you're speaking to. I really appreciate that. Now, clearly some of what you do is planned and scripted, but a fair amount happens in the moment. Can you share a story of a time where you had to adjust your communication in real time when things didn't go as you had expected or predicted?

[00:03:14] Peter Sagal: It's not so much I can share a moment, I can share any given show that we do. Because our show, we're unique in a couple of ways. First of all, we're an ensemble show. I'm not John Oliver speaking into directly into a microphone or Seth Meyers doing his closer look, which is very similar and quite brilliant. I'm a guy on stage with other people, three panelists, one judge, and scorekeeper, sometimes a special guest. And we're all talking together. And what that means is at any moment, any one of those people could derail what I'm out to do. I could say to myself, I'm going to talk about that. And the panelists could decide, no, no, no.

[00:03:46] We're gonna talk about this. Happens all the time. Secondly, we do write a script. I have very talented colleagues with whom I research and write and rewrite and rewrite a script over the course of the week, very much like a standard comedy shows writer's room. But what makes my show different is we then take that script and I have to be ready at any minute to throw it out. In fact, one of the things that we see as a failure on our show is if I were to do all the jokes written in front of me, and the panelists don't really chime in. Because we're very fond of the jokes. We wrote them, we worked on them. But if it's just me talking, then it's not our show. Our show is a conversation.

[00:04:27] So what that means is I could start off talking about whatever. So we happen to be talking in a day after we taped the show on the week of the vice presidential debate, so we knew we were gonna talk about the vice presidential debate. We wrote jokes about the vice presidential debate. I ended up about with five or six of 'em. Hello Teddy. I'm talking about the vice presidential debate. Did you watch it? No. So I had all these jokes that we had written together about the vice presidential debate, but I had three panelists and they were gonna do their own thing. So I told a joke. I maybe did another joke. I got a laugh. I got us started.

[00:05:00] I turned to the panelist. Did you watch it? Well, yes I did. Well, this is what I thought. This is what they thought. Now I am, my first mode is guy delivering jokes. My second mode is guy hosting a conversation, and that was where we get back to what we talked about before. I wanna get their ideas. I wanna have them land jokes. If they start a line of commentary, my job is to make a judgment as to whether that's valuable. Usually out of respect to them, I say, okay, we'll see where it goes and encourage them to follow it. Really? What do you mean by that? Is that what you thought? Really? Part of the reason I'm able to do this is 'cause the show is edited. So yeah, I mean, I do that planning for A and instead X happening is not only a common occurrence, it's essentially my job.

[00:05:42] Matt Abrahams: The thing that you said there that I think is so important for others who find themselves in situations where they have to respond is that preparation is key, but being willing to let go of that preparation and follow what's happening and needed in the moment is really important. And in fact, you optimize for that and, and that's how you're defining success. I find it interesting that you feel you wouldn't be successful if you actually got through the script. And that's an important mindset and approach that I think many people can adopt. Do you do specific things to help you prepare for that? So for example, I don't know if you get nervous or anxious anymore. Is there anything you do to help set yourself up for success? Do you get very present oriented? Do you do something to manage your anxiety? 

[00:06:27] Peter Sagal: The way I prepare to go on stage and be confident and in the moment and not perturbed by the stress is by doing it for twenty-six years. But there is definite, I do have a little ritual. It's not that much of a ritual, but it's, it, it kind of works for me. We do a lot of prep right up to taping. We write, we rewrite, and then there's sometimes other things I need to do. I need to talk to the panelists, talk to them about whatever we're gonna do and we don't give them the answers to the questions that they're gonna answer, but we sometimes warn them as to what our top stories are gonna be. So they get in the right mindset. And this is what I do, we always start with what we call the warmup in which I come out and I just chat with the audience a little bit before actual taping starts. And that has a bunch of purposes.

[00:07:08] To let them know how the evening's gonna play out, to introduce to them to the people who are gonna be there to tell 'em who our special guest is gonna be. But it's also a moment for them to just spend with me. So what this is all about was, that's what I think about. I take a few minutes, I say, okay, everybody, and I walk backstage and I just start thinking about what my jokes are gonna be. Okay, I'll do, I'll mention that. I'll mention this. This is funny. Okay. And I focus on that. And I get that little two, three minute monologue in my head ready to go. I've got the points I wanna make. I go out, I do those jokes, they usually work. And then the audience is ready and I'm ready. And I'm confident because I've got this good script. I got these great talented people to my left, the panel. I got Bill Kurtis, who's always a rock to my right. What do I gotta worry about? Let's do this. 

[00:07:57] Matt Abrahams: It sounds to me like preparation is really important. You help prepare the guests to give them topics and focus. You prepare the audience to be participants actively in what it is you're doing, and then you prepare yourself. I think many of us, especially when we think about spontaneous speaking, speaking in the moment, we don't think about the prep work that we could do to help us get ready. And I think a ritual like you have can be very helpful for all of us. We, we can think about what are the things I can do to help get myself present, get myself focused, perhaps help prepare other people to maximize the experience. So I appreciate that. One of the things that many people struggle with, especially when put on the spot, is introducing not just themselves, but others. You can imagine sitting in a meeting and your boss turns to you and says, hey, you know that person? Why don't you introduce them to the group? You do a lot of introducing on the show.

[00:08:52] Peter Sagal: I do.

[00:08:52] Matt Abrahams: You introduce yourself, you introduce guests, you introduce the participants. You even talk about your production staff. To your mind, what makes a good introduction?

[00:09:01] Peter Sagal: Here's the secret. People think that the focus of an introduction should be the person you're introducing. I wanna make this person feel good. I wanna say that this person has all these important qualities. So, just like you said, if you asked me to introduce my friend in a meeting, I'd be thinking about my friend, and I'd think, okay, how can I make my friend happy? But here's the trick. You shouldn't think about making your friend happy. You should think about making the audience happy. You guys are so lucky because I've got this person, this person for you. And that affects everything in terms of the words I choose to introduce them, how I choose to describe them, but even more importantly, my attitude.

[00:09:45] So for example, if I'm introducing Paula Poundstone, who's been on our show, I never wanna say, and here's Paula Poundstone. You know her, you'll love her. Isn't she great? I wanna say, guys, here's Paula Poundstone. She's here, in front of you. And that, I think, it not only lets the audience know that this is a privilege, this is a present, they get to see this person just based on my attitude. But it also lets, in a roundabout way, like a ricocheted way, the person I'm introducing know what I think of them. So it serves that purpose as well. 

[00:10:19] Matt Abrahams: I really like that you're introducing, not just the person, but the experience that you want the others to have of that person. And the way in which you focus your attention, not on the person, but on those you are introducing them to, helps you make that experience possible. I really appreciate that and I will look at how you introduce people differently now as a result. 

[00:10:44] Peter Sagal: That really is my secret. I just want everybody to know, man, you are lucky. Isn't this great? And you have to mean it too, as, as I think George Burns is most often credited with saying about acting. The most important thing is sincerity. If you can fake that, you've got it made. 

[00:11:00] Matt Abrahams: Speaking of humor, uh, you are certainly funny and you use humor so well. What advice do you have for people who try, or need to be, or want to be funny in the moment? Are there things, are you judging and saying, yeah, that's gonna work, that's not gonna work. And based on your experience, or how do you coach people, if you were, to be funny in the moment? 

[00:11:20] Peter Sagal: There's a old saying that writing can't be taught, but it can be learned. And to whatever extent that's true, it's quadrupley true for humor. I don't think you can teach somebody to be funny. The only way to succeed in the arts is figure out what you want to see in the world that's not there yet, and make it. And then hope that other people agree with you. That's it. There's no other way. And same with humor. The only way to make an audience laugh is to do something that you legitimately think is funny and hope they agree with you. You know, I'll give you an example. So I was interviewing Bob Seger and I said, man, you were out there in, in like the rock and roll scene in the seventies in Southern California.

[00:12:00] It was crazy, right? And he says, yeah. He says, you know, I went out there and I, and I borrowed this guy's mansion and he had this like amazing TV setup and he had all these like cable channels. I had never seen anything like it. I said, so you're telling me that you went out to the bacchanal, the drug and sexual bacchanal of seventies Hollywood music scene, and the thing that you enjoyed most was cable tv? And it got a big laugh because it was both kind of funny and also true. So that's what I'm always looking for. 

[00:12:28] Matt Abrahams: So it's about being committed and being authentic to what's true for you. 

[00:12:32] Peter Sagal: Yeah. You have to be present. I think that is the key, as Ram Dass told us, being here now. Being attuned to the possibilities where this could go, steering it toward the choice that you prefer. You're talking to somebody, they say three things, my job is to make sure if I'm gonna follow up with one of those three things, to follow up with the one that will lead to the best outcome for my audience. 

[00:12:54] Matt Abrahams: Are there things you do to help you get present oriented? I know you're a runner and for many people, running helps be present oriented.

[00:13:01] Peter Sagal: Yeah, it's very meditative. For me, one of the things that really helps is just the adrenaline of being in front of an audience, is focusing. But I gotta tell you, sometimes even that fails. There have been times when something has gone wrong or when something happens to just knock me off my game and I'm standing on stage and I'm a million miles away and that is bad.

[00:13:22] We also found out, by the way, that Rod Stewart and his band were also banned from all Holiday Inns, and they got around it by checking in as Fleetwood Mac. Oh my God. I am so sorry.

[00:13:32] Bill Kurtis: You just gave up the next one.

[00:13:33] Peter Sagal: I just gave up the next one because what happened was we had talked about this and then since we talked about it, it got written up as the next question and I didn't know that. So can you imagine my shame just now, looking down at my script and seeing this question. But what we're gonna do is we're just gonna go through with it because this is show business and the show must go on. Yeah. Alright, here's your next question. 

[00:13:58] Matt Abrahams: So, when something like that happens where you do get knocked off your game, what helps you come back is what I'm hearing, is to just remind yourself that I have to be present and I just have to handle what's going on.

[00:14:09] Peter Sagal: Yes. Let's say like you say something that is just the wrong tone and it brings the room down. And you have two choices if you're me at that moment. You can say, oh God, that was terrible. Or you can say, well, we got thirty more minutes of show, and that can still be good. 

[00:14:22] Matt Abrahams: I'm sure you're familiar with a famous basketball coach, Mike Krzyzewski. He had this notion that he would teach his players of next play. If something goes abysmally wrong or even if it goes amazingly, well, move on to the next play. 

[00:14:36] Peter Sagal: Yeah. I'm more of a baseball guy. And one of the things I've come to learn about baseball players is one of the things that teams look for in players, especially pitchers, is the ability to shake off a mistake, be that a bad pitch that gets hit outta the park for a home run, be it an error if you're a fielder. The ability to shake it off, say, okay, that happened, but now I'm going to pitch well. And one of the things I've learned about elite athletes is that their mindset is such that if something goes wrong, it's an anomaly. Maybe because the ref got it wrong, but it doesn't reflect on them. And in a weird way that's kind of delusional, but in other ways it's absolutely necessary. 

[00:15:14] Matt Abrahams: The, the approach and the mindset really makes a big difference in terms of success in these moments, Peter, you are very gracious in the way you interview people. Demonstrating graciousness can be tricky. You don't want to come off as too effusive, nor do you wanna be too matter of fact. Any suggestions for how to be gracious in our communication? 

[00:15:34] Peter Sagal: Well, lemme start off by talking about myself. It entirely depends on what your job is, right? My job is not the job of the people on 60 Minutes, or even the people who interview folks for the new shows on NPR, All Things Considered Morning Edition. My job is not Steve Inskeep's. My job isn't even Terry Gross's. My job is to offer a good time to our guest, to make them happy, to make them happy they came. So my job is to make them comfortable, to put them at ease, to joke around with them in a way that they appreciate. How do I do that? First of all, I try to find things that they will enjoy talking about. I try to find things that they don't always have to talk about. One of the things I promise people who are coming onto our show is I say, I hope this will be the most enjoyable stop on your publicity tour. I, I wanna get them off their talking points, but not specifically to make them uncomfortable, to give them something else to talk about. I get interviewed a lot and being asked a different kind of question, like for example, these, is really a pleasure. If people are asking me different questions than I normally get, I'm like, oh, okay. Well this is fun. This is interesting.

[00:16:38] I'll like, this is fun to talk about. Sometimes you think to yourself, well, I'm gonna make this person happy by explaining to them how much I appreciate their work. But what you're really trying to do is show the person that you're special, that they should like you just as much as you like them. This is in particularly referring to those situations where you're interviewing somebody you really admire. That's not a gift, showing yourself off to them. Even if you think it is, because what you're showing them is how much you appreciate them. What is a gift is to let them express themselves by being genuinely interested in what they have to say about this, that, or the other thing. For example, I noticed that when you're playing this role, you have a tendency to do X. Uh, that struck me as really smart. Where did that come from? Oh, well, uh, they might say, uh, thank you for noticing that. That's something I actually thought about. Or they might say, really, I never thought about that at all. And that's a fine answer too, you know? The best way to be gracious is to turn the attention as much as you possibly can to them.

[00:17:36] Matt Abrahams: It's being other focused, but also being appreciative of making the moment special, is what I heard you say. Not just run of the mill.

[00:17:45] Peter Sagal: Make it special for them. And if you can do that, you're gonna make it special for your audience. 

[00:17:50] Matt Abrahams: So before we end, I'd like to ask you three questions that I'm asking everyone who's part of this mini series on spontaneous speaking. Is there somebody that jumps to mind as a really accomplished communicator in that regard?

[00:18:02] Peter Sagal: Stephen Colbert, although weirdly, that's not nearly as much on display now as it was when he was doing The Colbert Report, but what he was doing every night, especially in his interview segment, was so astonishing. He was having a conversation with a real person who had something important to say and he was doing it improvisationally in character. To do that and still get a good interview was an act of prestidigitation that I don't think we'll ever see again. I actually have spoken to him and one of the things he told me, which I thought was so fascinating, was the only people he had trouble interviewing was the people he genuinely admired because his character wouldn't.

[00:18:39] Matt Abrahams: Wow. 

[00:18:39] Peter Sagal: And I thought that was amazing.

[00:18:41] Matt Abrahams: Question number two, what advice would you give our listeners to just become better speakers in the moment? 

[00:18:48] Peter Sagal: I think there are two things, both difficult, but both important. A, confidence. We, human beings are so good at reading social cues that if you're sending out social cues of discomfort, of nervousness, that's all people are gonna pay attention to. And the second one is kind of connected, is you have to say something of value. And that's really hard. Just like I was talking about with comedy, there's a tendency to just do something that you know the audience always thinks is funny. That's what she said. Coming up with something that is both valuable and something that your audience has never heard before is really hard, but absolutely essential. That's the job. I mean, one of the things that's really an advantage if you're speaking to somebody is if you know something that they don't, and if you can do any one of those things or anything related, you'll be a lot better off.

[00:19:40] 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. So, I'd like you to give me some homework, Peter. If you were to assign me one thing that would help me do something that you do regularly, what would it be? 

[00:19:58] Peter Sagal: So, one of the things that I might suggest is if someone has to give a speech on any given topic, either sit down and write out your speech, or if you really want to be daring, record it, and then listen to it with a very, or read it, with a very critical eye. The critical eye has to be focused on what's new. What do I have to say that nobody else can offer this audience. Could be your personal perspective because of the experiences you've had. It could be knowledge that you've researched and discovered that you believe your audience doesn't have access to. Or it can be an insight that you have faith in and also know that is new to your audience. And everything that isn't one of those three things, personal experience, genuine knowledge that you've discovered, or insight that no one else to your knowledge has had, if not that, strike it out. See what you got left. 

[00:20:51] Matt Abrahams: That advice to record yourself and to listen critically for what's new is homework that I will absolutely put into practice. Peter, this has been fantastic. The insights you provided in terms of connection, in terms of making others look good, to help you be successful, and to really add value by providing something new or something insightful or a different perspective can help make us all better spontaneous speakers. Thank you for your time.

[00:21:20] Peter Sagal: My pleasure. And also open with a joke. That always works. 

[00:21:24] Matt Abrahams: Thank you.

[00:21:30] Thank you so much for joining us for another episode of Think Fast Talk Smart, the podcast. To learn more from our spontaneous speaking coaches. Listen to our four-part miniseries episodes, 197, 198, 199, and 203. You can also go to fastersmarter.io/spontaneous. This episode was produced by Katherine Reed, Michael Riley, and me, Matt Abrahams. Our music is from Floyd Wonder. With 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. 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 Anythings, and much more at fastersmarter.io/premium.