#63, Matt Abrahams, Author and Lecturer at Stanford University — Embracing vulnerability in leade...

Welcome back. This is From Startup to Grownup, and I'm your host, Alisa Cohn. And today we have a great guest, Matt Abrahams. Matt is an expert at communications. He teaches at Stanford, and he's also the author of Think Faster, Talk Smarter. Matt calls communications operationalized leadership. And today we get into the nuts and bolts of that and how you can be a better communicator and even more importantly, think on your feet. Which is an important skill for everybody and certainly for leaders. We talk about the sticky stuff, how you can get better at small talk, how you can handle presentations, how to give and also receive tough feedback, and how to calm yourself down when you find yourself feeling overwhelmed in the moment. Matt is kind enough to give me a little personal coaching on that very topic. Matt is a great communicator himself, and this discussion is all practical. So get ready to take notes. Please enjoy this fantastic conversation with Matt Abrahams, author of Think Faster, Talk Smarter. Matt, welcome to the show. I'm so excited to have you.

Alisa, it is going to be so much fun to have a conversation with you. I'm excited.

Well, I'm thrilled to have you because you know my podcast, my book is called From Startup to Grownup. It's really all about the journey from founder to leader, but it's really about the journey that all all leaders have to go through as they grow into leaders. And don't you think communication is a big part of that journey?

Hmm, let me think about it. I actually like to say that communication is operationalized leadership. It is how we lead. So I think it is a critical component to leadership.

I'd like to hear you riff a little bit more on that. So just to set the scene for everybody, so Matt is a lecturer at Stanford. He just wrote this book, it's called Think Faster, Talk Smarter. It's fantastic. We're gonna get into actually techniques and tools in how you can be better on your feet, if you will. So I'm very excited to do that. But Matt, talk more about how you just sort of said that operationalize leadership.

Well, if you think about it, most of what we do when we lead other people is try to get them aligned with a point of view, to help share directionality with them, to demonstrate that we hear and are aligning with what's important to people. All of that is communication. All of that is how we can influence, how we can motivate, how we can demonstrate connection. So to me, communication is the foundation of effective leadership. Yes, you need to be able to define strategy. Yes, you need to be able to make tough and quick decisions, but all of that is enacted through the communication that we have.

Yeah, I love that. And what do you think about identity? Because I really think the way you communicate is part of your identity. When we were talking just a minute ago, you were sort of talking about finding your voice, and we were talking about the difference between like being in person and being in email. Can you talk about how important communication is with your own identity?

Absolutely. So I'm a big proponent of authenticity, and to me, authenticity is aligning or congruence between what you say and how people perceive it and who you are. So yes, your identity matters. And many of us— and I'm amazed, I have two teenage kids, late teenage kids, and they're managing multiple social identities. It's amazing to me in a way that I can't. So they've got their online presence, they've got their gamer presence, they've got their athletic presence. In a way, I mean, it's just mind-boggling. Our identities are critical to how we present ourselves to others and we have to be very cognizant of the way in which we use communication to do that. So finding that voice is important, and then having that voice be consistent in the many avenues that we present ourselves in really matters. You and I were talking about finding the right tone of voice in emails and in the books we write. That's a challenge, and people need to think about what resonates with them and what will resonate with those they speak to.

Yeah, and back to sort of identity and also back to leadership, I just don't think that people are as intentional. Most people are not as intentional, and very often leaders in the workplace are not as intentional as all that, you know, when they're kind of recce— when they're communicating. So I guess I would ask you, Matt, like, as a first step, you know, if we sort of think about giving advice in a masterclass to everybody, how do you remind yourself— well, first of all, why is it important to be so intentional in the workplace or maybe in your life? And how do you remind yourself to be intentional when you're communicating?

Well, if you think about it, the definition of the word communication comes from this notion of making things common. It's all about to make common. And if we have to make something common, that means we have to be intentional in terms of thinking about who we're speaking to and figuring out what's the best way to package our information so that they can best understand and join us in the collaboration that we're, we're endeavoring to create. So we have to remind ourselves that communication is not just broadcasting information out. Communication is really about inviting the other to collaborate with you to achieve whatever goal you have, which means you have to be intentional. I have to think about what's relevant and important to the person I'm talking to. What are their attitudes and knowledge level relative to what I'm saying? What are their areas of resistance and motivation? So by being intentional, to me, it means being other-focused so I can best tailor my message. I like to say that we all suffer from the curse of knowledge and the curse of passion when we communicate. And the only antidote to the curse of knowledge and curse of passion is empathy. And empathy means we have to be intentionally focused on the needs of those that we're communicating with. So to me, intention is simply being other-focused and really thinking about how to land my message for them.

I love that. And that leads us straight into a topic we both have a passion for, which is small talk.

Hahaha, yes.

I did a talk recently called Beyond Small Talk, and I made the case that small talk is big talk. And I know you talk about that a lot in your book. So when you talk about being other-directed, how does that lead us to small talk and make the case for small talk and how important it is, Matt?

I want to see that talk you gave because I am giving very similar talks as well. I like to say that big things happen in small talk. And a lot of us write off small talk or we try to avoid it because it's got some awkwardness to it. And I think that's exactly wrong. Great things can happen during small talk. You can learn about yourself and others, you can connect, you can foster collaborations in the future, build trust. What I'll do when people first tell me that they just dread small talk, I'll say, "I want you to think back to your friends that you have. How did you connect with them? How did you initially start?" In many cases, small talk was the avenue that we first went down to develop these big relationships that we have. So, small talk can lead to big things. Now, it is uncomfortable and it's uncomfortable for many reasons because it's spontaneous, often in contrived situations, and that can feel awkward. And the other thing is we also make it feel more awkward because we put a tremendous amount of pressure on ourselves to do well in small talk. We want to be the most interesting person in the room. We see it like a tennis match where I've got to serve the ball over the net and score. That's the wrong mindset. I had somebody on my podcast, her name was Rachel Greenwald, fascinating woman. She's an academic and a matchmaker, really interesting. And she said the goal of small talk is to be interested, not interesting. So unlike a tennis match where you're just trying to score, it's more like hacky sack, that beanbag game where you try to keep the ball up in the air without hitting the ground. You actually have to set the other person up so they can get it back to you to be successful.

Successful.

And that's how small talk can be made more effective.

I love that. I love that so much. So you have a few formulas that you teach people for small talk. So let's work on those. Maybe do a little small talk on me.

I'm a big fan of structure, and structure to me is our frameworks, formulas, and they can help you feel more comfortable and confident in these moments of spontaneity. You're talking about small small talk, but formulas and structures work in giving feedback, Q&A skills, introducing yourselves.

We're going to get to all those.

Oh, great. I love it.

I love it.

So in small talk, what's really important is to be curious. It is through curiosity that you can continue the communication. And so I have a framework that I really like. It's 3 questions: What? So what? Now what? And you can literally ask these questions. So you can go up and say, "What brings you here?" or "What do you think about the keynote speaker we just heard?" So you ask a what question. And then after the what question, you ask a why question. "Why is that important? Why do you think that? What leads you to that conclusion?" And then finally, the third question is now what, which is what comes next. So given that we just talked about the keynote, what does that lead to for us? So by asking those three questions, what, so So what? Now what? It gives you a path for a conversation that avoids what are called the doom loops. A doom loop is, hi, how are you? I'm fine, how are you? Well, now we're nowhere better off. What do you do? I do this. What do you do? I do this. So these are these doom loops. So we can avoid that by having a formula or structure in mind to help. One last thing I'll say about small talk. My mother-in-law had a black belt in small talk. She was amazing. Amazing at it. And her trick, her secret was 3 simple words: "Tell me more." When somebody was done speaking, giving some information, she'd pause a second to digest it and she would then say, "Tell me more." And simply by asking that question, she got more information out of people. People enjoyed the conversation more. She lived in the Midwest and when she would come visit us on the West Coast, she would get off the airplane with 3 new best friends because she was I'm so good at small talk. So there are little things you can do in small talk that lead to big results.

Okay, side note, my beau is from Ohio and we just went to Ohio for Christmas and he and the woman behind the— we just went to Barnes Noble— he and the cashier had the most aggressive hacky sack game of small talk I've ever heard in my life. 15 minutes of small talk. I'm like, what is going on around here? Yeah, so I have new respect for my beau because we transplanted him. He's out— he's been out of Ohio for 30 years, but like back in Ohio, he's like his old self. Those Midwesterners, they have a— they have a gift.

They do, they do. You know, when my wife first met my family, she's like, do you guys even like each other? Because all we do is talk over each other, right? In my family, the only way to be heard is to speak louder and longer than anybody else.

Totally, totally. But if we talk about your formula, I love your formula. I just want to acknowledge that people walking into a party or a con, like a big networking, you know, environment, which people hate for so many reasons, and, and other, as you called it, contrived circumstances, right? It's hard to— there's two problems. It's hard to have the presence of mind to say anything but, how are you? Right? Or, hello, what do you do? And then even if I know I have to say something that's like you said, like, what, so what— actually, you say it again— now what, what, so what, now what— I don't quite know how to start that. So can you give us a few tips of, first of all, having the presence of mind to, to do that? And then what are some topics you can raise which give you that formula?

Great. So, uh, I think coming from a place of curiosity. A lot of what affects spontaneous speaking and helps us feel better and more comfortable at it is to work on our mindset first. So if I go in saying, "This is a drag. This is going to be boring," then it sets me up for that, a self-fulfilling prophecy. Instead of saying, "Hey, this is an opportunity. I'm going to be curious. I want to learn something in these interactions." So it's how we start. And if you want to learn things, then questions tend to come more naturally. What I like to do is I like to highlight something in the environment or the space that I'm in. Very recently, I was part of an event. There was a big speaker conference thing and then we all got ushered into a reception and I didn't know anybody. And I noticed that everybody around was wearing mostly different color blues, shirts and skirts and everything blue, and I wasn't. And I turned to this guy who also wasn't who was in line with me and I said, "I must have missed the memo of the blue shirts." And he looked around, he looked at me and he laughed and he said, "Me too." And then that was all we needed to just have a conversation to get started. So I think observation and commenting on something happening in the environment is good, being curious, relating to some common shared experience. So for example, if we just came from a keynote address, we could talk about what was in the keynote. What do you think about AI's impact on whatever? And all of a sudden, we have a conversation going. So it's just that initial step that is— can be challenging. But if you approach it from curiosity and realize that most of the other people in this environment are also uncomfortable, so by starting or initiating, you make it easier for everybody.

Yeah, I think that's beautiful. You said so many important things, but I want to highlight two in particular is that as you were saying early, it's not about you. It's about them. It's about being curious about them, drawing them into a conversation. And if you take the emphasis off of you, you'll be less nervous. And then the second is that they all want to, like, everybody is feeling the way you're feeling and you don't even realize it. So being able to, you know, sort of conquer your own fears and invite other people into the conversation is really a gift. It's really absolutely a gift. And to your point about small talk earlier, I think it's so important important to recognize— this is obviously a topic of passion for me too— it's like so important to recognize that literally there's no way to meet somebody without breaking the ice, and that's it. And, and so you have to find a way to break the ice. And so I love your structure to be able to do that, and I want to empower everybody to kind of go out there and, and make something of small talk because it's the only way you're going to be able to kind of relate to people and then find out what's so special about, about them, right?

Absolutely. And when we think of breaking the ice, you know, I think many of us in I don't even remember what they're called, but the boats that go through the glaciers, you know, and it doesn't have to be this big thing. It could be just chiseling away, just, you know, just a comment on, "Wow, look at all those flowers that they have out on the table. I don't think I've seen flowers like that indoors before," or whatever. And all of a sudden you have a conversation. It doesn't have to be this— we, again, it's this notion of we want to be so interesting and that puts so much pressure on us. Just be interested, just be curious, and doing that lowers the bar and makes it easier for you and the others around.

I love it. So now let's shift gears and talk about pitching because a lot of founders obviously listen to the show. A lot of founders are interested obviously in raising money and, you know, frankly pitching a lot of pitching, obviously investors, but pitching employees, pitching customers. What is your structure around pitching and what advice do you have around pitching? What do we need to know about that?

Yeah, I spend a lot— this won't surprise you, I teach at a business school in Silicon Valley. I run a coaching practice for entrepreneurs. So pitching is part of my life. Yeah. And so pitching is really important. And one of the most important things that I would say for pitching again is to understand your audience. What most entrepreneurs will do, most people who have something they're trying to pitch, they'll create one pitch and they'll just use the same pitch everywhere. You must tailor and adjust it based on who you're speaking to, based on how you're doing it, in person, virtually, whatever. So you, you can have a framework, you can have an initial set of core ideas, but how you actually structure that and deliver it should change based on the audience. And that's true of most communication. So number one, we have to adjust and adapt for our audiences. When it comes to pitching, it's really important to, to think about not what's important what's important to that audience. So relevance is key. And we have to focus on the value, not the features and functions. So a lot of this people have heard. I have come up with a structure that I think works really well for a quick elevator pitch, abstract executive summary version of whatever it is you're pitching, your product, your service, your offering of some sort. And it's 4 sentence starters. Finish these 4 sentences. And then if you want, Alisa Cohn, you can give me a product and I'll try to pitch it in the structure so people can see how you could do this in the moment. So you get in the elevator and it turns out the person you're standing next to is a VC who's got a little extra time before their meeting. And they say, oh, what do you do? What's your pitch? You can actually do it on the spot. So it's 4 sentence starters. What if you could, so that, for example, and that's not all. What if you could so that, for example, and that's not all. And I think the best way to understand this is to actually hear a pitch. So I'm willing to play if you are. Give me a product or service to pitch and I will try my best to do it in this structure.

Okay, I have an idea that I've always wanted to do. I don't think I'm going to do it, so everyone out there is welcome to it.

All right.

But I think it's a good idea. I think that there should be executive coaching, executive coaching for kids in high school or in college to help them build their professional skills before they go off to the world of work. I think there'd be a lot to do there in terms of building their skills, and the parents would pay for it. Parents who want everything for their kids' success, so the parents would pay for it.

Excellent.

That's my idea. I wanna raise money for it.

I love it, I love it, and you should take a percentage of anybody who who does this, because I agree there's a lot of coaching to help kids get into college, but not necessarily coaching to help them come out well. So that's great. Tell me who I'm pitching to. Am I pitching to the parents or to the kids?

No, well, how about pitching to the— I want to get investors.

Oh, investors. Pitching to investors.

Okay. Yeah, why not?

What if you could empower the next generation of leaders to be more effective right when they come out of school? So that they can maximize their potential and you can maximize your returns. For example, imagine your kids or the kids you know, your nephews and nieces, and the challenges they have with adulting just coming out of school. It's hard. There's lots of options, lots of choices. Wouldn't it be great if there was a coach who could help guide them through that? And that's not all. Once you have enough of this coaching going on, you can build alumni groups and communities that can become self-sustaining. So you can introduce people who went through this coaching in New York to people who went through this coaching in Arizona. And all of a sudden, you have communities into which you could sell more opportunities and leverage the benefits. So do you see how those 4 structure— or those 4 prompts get you in structured way to articulate what's going on. What if you could gets people excited. It draws them in. What if you could. So that is the relevance. Here's the, here's the key relevance. For example makes it very concrete so people can envision it. And the that's not all shows that whatever your idea is, the legs that it has beyond what you're talking about and the opportunities for future, in this case revenue opportunities, but any future. So those four 4 prompts I think are very powerful to help you very quickly articulate the value of what it is you're trying to get across.

Yes. So first of all, I want to give you a round of applause. Yay!

Oh, thank you. Are you gonna invest? You gonna invest? Correct.

That's really fantastic. I know, exactly. We're gonna do this now. We're so compelling. I love the way you frame that, and of course I love that you're able to do that, you know, kind of in the moment. You know, Matt, I have to ask you, First of all, you're looking so happy, and I'm so, I'm so proud of you.

And you're like, why wouldn't I be happy?

No, no, but it's like, that was a really good job. Like, yeah, that was a good job. But Matt, in all honesty, were you always that able to, like, to think on your feet? I know that you have a story about how you developed this skill, but I want people to realize that you weren't born doing that.

I've worked very hard, and thank you for the compliment there. I still think I have a long way to go, and I think all of us do. Communication is something we can all continue to develop and hone. I was at some point in my life a very nervous speaker. I was not always confident in my ability to speak in the moment. But the story you're alluding to— I had lots of opportunities to get the reps though, because as somebody with the last name Abrahams, A-B, all through my education, I always went first. I am a teacher. I was a high high school teacher at one point in my career. I know teachers get lazy and they just sit kids or people alphabetically. I always knew where my seat was in almost every class I went into. And so when the teacher would go around the room for whatever reason, they'd always start alphabetically. So I was always speaking spontaneously, you know, from elementary school all the way up. So I've had the reps, and having the reps is important. You have to get the, the opportunity to practice. But you also have to do some mindset shifts and become more concise and clear. And those are things I struggled with for a long time and still am trying to work on. So yes, I had a little bit of an advantage just because of where I would sit, literally. But also I had to work very hard to get to a point where I feel much more confident in my ability to speak spontaneously. But I still get nervous.

Yeah. What were some of the mindset shifts that you had to make?

Yeah, well, so these are— I document them in the book. So the book talks about a 6-step process and the first 4 of those steps are mindset related. The first is managing anxiety. Anxiety looms large in all communication, planned or spontaneous, and there are things we can do to manage that anxiety. But the 2 big shifts I had to make and I encourage others make are the 2nd and 3rd steps in the methodology. One is stop trying to be perfect. Many of us, when we communicate, we want to do it right. We want to answer the question in the right way, give the best feedback, be the most interesting in small talk, as we talked about. And the reality is there is no right or best way to communicate. There are better ways and worse ways, but striving to do it right actually makes it more likely that you won't do it well, because you're using limited cognitive bandwidth to judge and evaluate everything you're saying. "Is that right? Is that the best way I could say it?" Instead of focusing on the actual purpose of the communication which we talked about earlier which is about connection, about collaboration. So if you dial down that volume of trying to be perfect and focus instead on connecting, you actually benefit. So I like to say it's about connection, not perfection. And then the second big mindset shift I had to make is to see these spontaneous moments as opportunities, not threats. I would always feel judged and evaluated and challenged. You know, if somebody asked me a question, I wouldn't be like, oh, that's a great question. I would be like, oh, they're trying to poke holes in my argument or find weaknesses in what I'm saying. And it's when you make that shift to say, this is an opportunity, there's something that can benefit me and them in this interaction, I can learn something, we might build a future collaboration— that mindset shift to see these spontaneous challenging situations as opportunities is huge. So by managing anxiety, getting out of our own way and looking for connection, not perfection, and seeing these circumstances as opportunistic rather than threats and challenges can make a fundamental difference. It's made a difference in my life, in the life of the people I teach and coach, and it can make a difference in the life of all of your listeners if we begin to adopt these mindset shifts.

Yeah, I love that. I love that. But how do you make those mindset shifts? Because mindset shifts, because when you are legitimately feeling like threatened or legitimately feeling on the spot or something like that, it's hard to be like, oh, it's an opportunity, or I don't have to be perfect. If you're the kind of person who's like approaches things like it has to be perfect, is there advice you can give to help people actually make these mindset shifts?

Absolutely. The book is full of the advice, and let me share a few A few things to— so I'll address all three very quickly. So when it comes to anxiety, there are things we can do to manage both symptoms and sources. I'll give you one quick for each. For symptoms, many people feel their heart beating, they speak fast, they get shaky. Deep belly breathing, the kind you would do if you've ever done yoga or tai chi or qigong, can really help. For symptoms— those are for symptoms. For sources, things that initiate or exacerbate anxiety. Many of us are made nervous by the goal we're trying to achieve. We want to get funding, we want to get good grades, we want our project supported. Those are all future states. So if we can make ourselves more present, we by definition are less worried about the future. So we can do things to get ourselves more present-oriented. We could do something physical. We can walk around the building. We can listen to music like athletes do. So those are very practical, tactical things we can do, and there are myriad of those, lots of those I share that we could do to manage anxiety. For getting us to think about connection versus perfection, it's about switching where we put our attention. Many of us are self-focused when we communicate. If we can put our attention on the audience and their needs and what, what we can do to help them, shining the spotlight on them and taking it off us, helps. So what does this mean? This means I might ask more questions so that you are sharing your information and I'm having to listen. It might mean that I paraphrase more so I'm really listening to hear what you say back to me. These are ways to focus on connection more than perfection. And then finally, to, to see these things as opportunistic, I challenge everybody to think about times they have had success in whatever the environment is, answering questions, giving feedback, etc. And chances are when you've done that, it is because you have seen it as an opportunity or you've taken that step forward rather than becoming defensive. So part of it is a mind game of going back in your mental Rolodex and say, oh yeah, that helped when I did that, or that didn't help. And I'm not saying you have to agree with what the people say when you feel threatened or challenged, but you have to listen and at least try to look for Opportunities to connect. So very specific things people can do to begin to feel as if they are moving in the right direction. Nothing in communication is a light switch where you go from nothing to something or off to on. It is all gradual. So it takes practice. You know, the only way you get better at communication is 3 things: repetition, reflection, and feedback. And that takes time. And with that time, we can get better at it.

I love it. That's so good. Okay, Matt, so I'm going to ask you to do some coaching for me because I recently had a scenario where I, I wish I had read your book before I had this scenario. So I was interviewing someone for my Forbes, um, as a Forbes contributor, and it wasn't Jeff Bezos, but it was like a Jeff Bezos. Okay, it was like someone who's a really big deal, and I'd done a lot of research. But anyway, he's out there in the media a lot, so it didn't have to do that much research because it's like everyone knows him. And as I went there, I was giving myself the pep talk. You know, I have this, my pep talk is, "I'm okay, you're okay, right? I'm okay, you're okay." And we had this conversation and towards the end, it was great, but towards the end, I realize now that I had these loud voices in my head, which are, "You're not making a personal connection." And also there was no questions I could ask him, Matt, because I already knew everything about him. Like there was like nothing to already ask. And as this all happened, I am positive that I acted normally, but actually my experience was that I kind of blacked out towards the end. So first of all, what encouragement do you have for me as I reflect on this difficult experience? And what would you have suggested I do in the moment as I was feeling my feelings, or maybe not being so where my feelings of nervousness or overwhelm or something.

Well, first, congratulations for having that opportunity. And I would like everybody to note that you are doing reflection on what happened so that you can improve. Many of us, when it comes to communication, we just want it over with, and when it's over with, we forget about it and we move on. But that means that we tend to fall into our normal patterns, our habit of communication. And you know that definition Definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. That's how many of us treat our communication. So I love that you're actually doing reflection. So in that moment, when you are beginning to feel like things are going off course or that you're blanking out or that you're not, you know, in that moment, ground yourself by coming back with a question and a focus on the answer. So I believe listening and other connectiveness is what helps bring you back when you get into your head or when you begin to have self-doubt. Remind yourself that there is value in the interaction. In the case that you were doing where you're interviewing somebody else to document it for others to see or read, your purpose is to bring the value that the person you're interviewing has to these other folks. And when you reconnect yourself to that purpose rather than getting lost in your own judgment or what you're worried about for for yourself, all of a sudden it gives you purpose and focus. So in those moments, I would encourage you to lean into, "I'm here to bring value to my audience. I want to find the most out I can. Ask a question, listen to the answer." That brings you into the present. When I coach speakers who share a similar process, so you're in the middle of a presentation and you're in front of a very important group that has a lot of say in your future direction. People can go into that same space you were in. And I say the best thing to do is to ask a question of the audience and get a response.

Yeah.

Forces you to come back into the moment, and then you can deal with it.

Yeah, no, that's great. But Matt, what if you're so— and I'll speak for myself, as I was so kind of like lost and just feeling, you know, unmoored, if you will— I did not have the presence of mind to ask a question. And that's the thing, is it's like this person so in the public that you can't even say— back to small talk— you can't even say, so where do you live? Or something like that. You know, it wasn't— it wasn't— it wasn't— I was sort of searching for a question and I came up blank. And I'm wondering what to do in those circumstances.

So I'm a big proponent of having what I call a back pocket question, a question that you think about in advance that's like the ripcord you pull if you're in that moment where you can't even and come up with a question. This happens to me sometimes. I teach the same class at the business school every quarter, twice a quarter, and I've done this for 13 or 14 years. Sometimes I can't— did I say this already? Did I say this this year? And in that moment, all I need is an opportunity to collect my thoughts. So I have a back-pocket question. So everybody listening, if you ever hear me say this, it means I have forgotten what I want to say and I need a moment. I will simply pause I will say to my students, "Let's pause and I'd like for you to share how what we've just discussed could be applied in your life." And my students don't think, "Oh, Matt's forgotten, he's being distracted, he's trying to just—" No, they think, "Oh, how does this apply to my life?" That's right. Going into the interview, you could have a question that is appropriate in many situations that you would— might come up in the conversation that you could you. So you could pause and say, "I'd like to go back and ask you what is an important question you wish I would have asked?" Or, "What is a question you've been asked in the past that really you thought was insightful or you wish you could answer again?" I mean, these are all 3 different types of back-pocket questions you could have that you could assert at any moment and you know them, you've thought about them in advance and so that in that moment, you can pull that ripcord and ask that question. Question such that it gets you back on track and gives you the space you need.

I love it. That's really helpful, Matt. Thank you. Yeah. And I feel like I'm just reflecting on all the things you just said. And one of the most important things that you really have talked about that I have found so helpful in my life, which I would recommend to everybody, is around being present, finding a way to ground yourself. And when you have voices in your head, and I'll speak for myself, they are loud, they there are many, they are there. You know, like, it's— you can't always be where you are. So it's like finding a way to kind of put yourself in your body, like you're saying with breathing, probably putting your feet on the floor, feeling, you know, your thighs or feeling your fingers to kind of remind you of your presence. And I think anyone who's feeling lack of confidence, to your point about value, I'm bringing value. By the way, you wouldn't be in the room if you weren't bringing value. So That's right. You know, like just thinking the pep talk in the moment, I think is helpful to clear your head enough to then having your back pocket question kind of gives you the security that you will be able to get back on track.

Right, absolutely. And I'd like to share, if you don't mind, just two thoughts on that. So we say a lot of negative things to ourselves. If we were to listen into the chatter that we have, and one great way to manage that is to have some kind of positive affirmation or mantra. And some people feel uncomfortable with that idea, but I do. Before I got on this call with you, before I do my teaching, my speaking, I simply say to myself, "I have value to bring." And it's not saying I'm the best speaker ever, I'm the best teacher. No, it just says I have value to bring. Students have chosen to be in my class. People have paid me to do coaching. Somebody is saying there's value in what you have to bring, and all I'm doing is acknowledging that for myself, and that quiets down the imposter syndrome, perhaps the lack of preparation, whatever. So having something you can say to yourself helps. I actually— some of the people I coach like this idea so much, they'll put a reminder in their phone for like 2 minutes before they go into the meeting and it pops up whatever that affirmation is to remind them to think that way. So that's one thing. The other thing to remind yourself is many of us catastrophize. The biggest fear I hear people people come to me with is, "I'm afraid I'm going to blank out when I speak. I'm going to just forget everything." And while that is possible, and some of us have experienced that, it's not incredibly likely. So I ask people to do what academics call a rationalization process, and it's very simple. Say to yourself, for the next communication event I have, what is the actual likelihood that I will blank out? 0 being absolutely won't happen, 100 meaning 100% 100% of the time or chance it will happen. Most people come in at 20 to 25% likelihood they'll blank out, which means 75 to 80% of the time you won't. So by reminding yourself that the likelihood is low, that takes some of the teeth out of our worry. And then there's one more step to the rationalization, which is ask yourself, if it were to come to pass that I do blank out, What's the worst thing that will happen for me or my audience? Well, they're going to be uncomfortable, it's going to be embarrassing, might have some short-term impact. But then I ask everybody, have you ever been uncomfortable, embarrassed, or had some negative short-term impact in any situation in your life? And everybody's like, of course, and you still survived, right? So by going through rationalization, by having a positive affirmation, it makes it easier to deal with the situation you were describing.

Yeah, that's great, Matt. That's really really helpful. I think that's fantastic. And you know, you're bringing me to another topic that people hate and get uncomfortable with, which is giving feedback. Yes. What ideas do you have for people? What structure, what tools you have for giving feedback? And then I would add, what structure do you have for people for receiving feedback? Because it's so important, as you pointed out, you can't get better without feedback, right? So what are your thoughts and structures and tools on feedback?

Yes. So thank you for that. I rarely get asked that second question, so I'm really excited that you brought that up. So I'm a big disciple of Kim Scott, Radical Candor. I think her approach to feedback—

A dear friend.

I love her. Yes. Yeah. And yeah, Kim is actually a neighbor and she and I go for walks and things. And so anybody listening who isn't inculcated in that should be. So there's a lot that I say that echoes what Kim says. First and foremost to me, what's most important are two things. One, feedback is a problem to be solved. And if we approach it as a problem to be solved, that means we need to invite the other person to be part of that discussion, which means we don't want to make them defensive or offend them. Now certainly, without equivocation, there are situations where that's not your goal of feedback. Somebody's doing something that is blatantly wrong, is harmful, is inappropriate, you stop it right away. You are not going through the process I'm about to describe. But in most circumstances, the goal of the feedback is to invite the other to collaborate with you to actually solve the issue. Second, so that's a framing of it. The second piece is you should be giving feedback, positive, neutral, and constructive all the time.. If all I do is give constructive feedback or all I do is give feedback once a year or every 6 months, it feels very different than if I'm constantly giving feedback, positive, neutral, and constructive. And any one bit of feedback I have, even if it's negative, fits into that bigger picture and we receive it very differently. So those are the underlying undercurrents for it. Now when it comes to giving feedback, shock surprise, I have a framework that I really like. And again, by the way, that what, so what, now what we talked about for small talk, you could use that for giving feedback. The what is your feedback, the so what is why it's important, and then now what is what you'd like the person to do differently. So I might say, Alisa, you know, that last meeting you were in, you did a great job except when you talked about the implementation plan. You spoke quickly without a lot of detail. That's the what. When you speak quickly without a lot of detail, 'People might think you're nervous or underprepared.' That's the 'so what.' 'Next time, speak a little slower and add these 3 points.' That's the 'now what.' So 'what, so what, now what' is a great way or framework for packaging information up, especially if you're in the moment. If you have more time in your plan, I have a structure I call the 4 I's. 4 I's for glasses, right? They help you see. But 4 I's because each of the starts with the letter I. And it's first and foremost information, then it's the impact, then it's invitation and implication. So in giving feedback, let's imagine I'm a manager and I have an employee who shows up late. My information is, "This is now the third meeting you showed up late for." Okay, that's information, it's objective, anybody could look at their watch, person showed up 5 minutes late. Impact, I feel "you are not prioritizing this meeting to the same level the rest of us are." So the impact is always from your perspective, the I language. I feel, I think, I believe, because that reduces the likelihood of defensiveness. Third step is invitation. "What can we do to help make sure you're on time the next time we meet?" So this is where I offer and the other person can respond. And then finally, implications are the consequences. If you show up on time next time, we'll "Finish the project and get a new one." That's a positive. I could say it negatively, "If you show up late again, we might have to remove you from the team." So by simply giving the information, the impact, the invitation, and the implications, not only do you package up the feedback in a way that's easily digestible for the recipient, but for you, it helps you prioritize what to say. Now, I'm gonna switch to the other side. Imagine somebody gave me feedback. Or gives you feedback, I'd like for you first to validate what you've heard. Doesn't mean you agree, but here's where paraphrasing or summarizing can help. So you summarize whatever it is the feedback is. Then it is appropriate, I think, in many cases to express gratitude. Gratitude for the attempt to help you improve or change. Again, doesn't mean I'm agreeing with what they said, but You know, thank you for taking the time. I appreciate you considering what I'm doing and how I can do it better. And then I believe we need to formulate our thought and express it where this is where we might say, I hear what you're saying about this. Here's what motivated it from my perspective. But again, treat it as a problem to be solved as a recipient as well as the giver versus a debate to be won or an argument to be fought. So I believe first validate what you've heard to make sure you got it right, express gratitude, and then give commentary from the frame of this is a problem we're both trying to solve.

Yeah, there's a lot there Matt. First of all that was very rich so thank you for sharing all that.

That's your way of saying I talk too much?

No no totally not! But there's a lot— We have to go back and unpack a lot of it because it was excellent. And I want to kind of go back to even the very beginning, which is you're talking about your frame. I love that. I would just say as a coach, I think it's also really important to get your mindset right. I know mindset is something you talk about a lot. It's really about, I'm here to be an ally. I'm here to support you. I'm not trying to slam you or blame you or kind of like punish you. And I think that managers in their drive to be good managers or not know how to be good managers are really busy holding people accountable, quote unquote, and forgetting that they need to be a steward of this person's career. So I think acting as an ally and getting your mindset around allyship is an important precursor to all that.

What's your take on that? I think that is so important. What you just said, you are a steward of somebody's career. And when you approach it that way, it makes you, again, I think makes you more collaborative and coordinated in giving feedback versus just thou shalt not do this. Right. I love that approach. Yeah. I'm gonna borrow, if that's okay, I'm gonna borrow the notion of steward of somebody's career. I really like that.

Feel free, absolutely. And then, you know, when you go through your framework, I love your framework, especially as it— both for business, especially as they relate to objective facts. I think sometimes my clients have— my clients can often be CEOs of of large companies, of startups, founders. And they would say of some of their executives, I can't explain it. It's just the vibe that they're not really working with their peers. Or I can't explain it. I just feel like there's something that they're not doing with their teams. And so for, like, for example, you know, I feel like we're unifying on the message, but I just feel like they're not owning that message themselves. If I can't fully articulate what it is, how does that alter? How could I adjust the feedback with that in mind? Right.

So, so I always like to ask people to give me concrete examples. So when you say the vibe doesn't feel right on the messaging, give me an example of what that means. What— give me an example of something that would feel more aligned. It's really about helping people explore so that they can be very concrete with what it is they want to say or this help make their feedback more specific. If you don't, then if you don't do that, you just have this feeling, I think that's valid but don't frame the conversation as one of feedback. Frame it as an exploration or as an ideation opportunity, right? But if I were to, I just have this inclination or this sense, and I'm a big fan of gut instinct and what you feel, but don't frame it as I'm here to give you feedback because you don't know what the specificity of the feedback is. It's not helpful. So rather frame it to say, hey, can we just have a conversation about the messaging? I'd love to just explore different avenues, not giving feedback, just want to talk about different opportunities.

Yeah, I love that. I think that's really helpful, the difference between feedback and sort of exploration. And there are different conversations that we have to have with people, right? Right.

And if I tell you we're gonna have a feedback conversation and I use it as an exploration, then we are out of sync and we might not get to where we need to be.

And you know what that's gonna do? It's gonna make somebody— and here's the next problem— defensive. So I'm the CEO, I've given you feedback, and I've done everything I try— tried to do it right. I tried to be structured, I tried to act as an ally, and I genuinely I actually think you're fantastic, and this is a real problem, and I need you to fix it because you're so great. This needs to get fixed. And then the person I'm talking to explodes or gets defensive. How do you— and then I'm going to talk in a second about how to not get defensive as the person getting the feedback. But how do you as the leader, as the person giving the feedback, react when someone then gets unexpectedly defensive to you?

So I am going to borrow from Kim Kim Scott, and I love this advice. When others get furious, you get curious, right? It's very, very tempting when somebody has an emotion, negative particularly, for me to go, whoa, and to ramp up my defenses and to come back at— to do one of two things, either retreat all the way and just either say, oh, I'm so sorry, right, and back down, or to gear up. And instead, I think Kim's advice is Exactly right. Ask questions. What about what we've talked about has been triggering? What is going on? Because you might not know, right? You might not know what led to that, right? And so I think being curious and again using paraphrasing and saying, I hear this. Again, not agreeing, but when you ask the question, paraphrase what you've heard. And it's always okay to say, well, this is some new information, or thank you for sharing a little bit more. I want to go back and think about this. So you can disengage from the situation and then think about it and come back again. So one, when that happens, take a deep breath and stand your ground. And I love this notion of getting curious instead of equally matching or running away. Right, right.

Because that's what happens when you get triggered. You then start— you're matching, but you're really being triggered. You're sort of just getting carried away and you're going with energy and you're no longer owning your own reaction and owning your own emotional self-control. Something, you know, the keys to leadership are just really about emotional self-control, which is actually very challenging, very challenging. What about, okay, so now what about on the other side of that, you're the person getting the feedback and you're doing as best you can, but you know, you're trying to look at this problem to be solved and you're trying to say thank you for that feedback, but actually you get defensive because your amygdala hijacks and you know, you get triggered or whatnot. How can you, as the person getting the feedback, I'm gonna give two scenarios, prevent yourself from getting defensive when you feel yourself rising, or if you can't stop yourself, gracefully exit the conversation if you just can't stop yourself from being defensive?

Yeah, I don't know that I have the best advice here. Because I can be triggered sometimes myself. But my advice is to take a moment. You know, very rarely in communication does something have to be immediately responded to. So if I'm feeling triggered or I'm feeling defensive or I'm feeling upset based on some feedback you've given me, taking a deep breath, maybe taking a pause, saying, "Hey, I really need to take a moment." I think that's okay. That's appropriate. And it can give us that moment to calm down and collect our thoughts. So I think that's been very useful for me. The other thing to do to buy time again is to paraphrase. Here's what I heard you say. And in saying that and having to articulate it, it can often take us out of that emotional place. And then bring us to a place where we can have a conversation. I would love in those circumstances for people to really think about in the moment what is the bottom line that's really upsetting or triggering. Because in those moments of high emotionality, a lot can be present. So really think what's the bottom line. Is the bottom line that you don't trust me? Is the bottom line that you're stepping, you know, micromanaging? What's the bottom line? And then formulate a response that's based on that bottom line. Many of us just say things that we either later regret or we don't remember or aren't in a coherent argument or structure. So thinking about that bottom line can really help and then build your message from the bottom line. So those are the two things I try to do. Those in my life can tell you if I'm successful at it or not. But I certainly can relate to that issue.

Yeah, I appreciate that. You know, can't we all relate to that issue? And I think when you say build your message on the bottom line, I think that's a— that's great advice. And I would just add, just— it's back to reflection, isn't it? You know, I mean, if you're really getting triggered at work, you're defensive, you're crying, the teary— usually something is going on more than what's going on. Like, yes, you know, I'm experiencing seeing you as not even experiencing you. You're like, you've been late to 3 out of the 4 of the meetings, I just want to check in. And then you have this oversized reaction, like, rah, you know, or crying or something. You're like, wow. You might want to reflect, like, there's something going on with you that is feeling, you know, like your nerve is being ruffled. And I think that there's a lot of big emotions in the workplace. And I think it's also just really helpful for everybody to kind of come to terms with their own triggers and what's driving their emotions because I think that it's just a helpful piece of the puzzle. You know, as you point out, reflection is such an important key.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And so I— you know, you have probably better advice than I do in these circumstances. So I appreciate learning from you as well. I appreciate that, Matt.

Well, I wanted to— I want to ask you— I'm gonna first ask you about public speaking, and then I want to ask you if there are other tools and things that people tend to struggle— actually, before I do that, I have two other questions for you. I want to ask you if there are other things that people struggle with, but the first is back to public speaking. So you've covered it a bit already in pitches. I wonder if there's anything anything else that people should be aware of, should take on board? Because as you well know, people are more afraid of public speaking than of dying, right? So we all know that. So what, what other additional tips or tools or thoughts do you have people as they handle public speaking?

Yeah, so, so when it comes to anxiety, there are lots of things we should do to, to help ourselves. We— and we have to again realize that it's a process. So anxiety management I think is the number one thing. And the very first book I wrote was on— it's called Speaking Up Without Freaking Out. It's 50 academically verified techniques to manage anxiety. And I don't expect all 50 to work for any one person. 3 to 5, I'm really happy. So I recommend everybody create— when I make all of my students do this in every class I teach, create an anxiety anxiety management plan. An anxiety management plan is 3 to 5 techniques that you think will work for you. Create an acronym so you can easily remember it and then you try it out. It's a hypothesis. You test the hypothesis and see if it works. And we do this in the very beginning of my class. So when students graduate from my class, they can go apply it in their life where it really matters. And I have students from years ago who are writing me like— I just had one maybe 2, 3 weeks ago where a former former student from years ago, his grandmother passed away and he had to give the eulogy and he got very nervous and he was writing to thank me for having had him or help him create the anxiety management plan because he leveraged it years later. So create an anxiety management plan for yourself, test it out, get confident with it.

What's a few examples? Because I know you have examples in the book and I'm sure you have some.

Yeah, so this is what I do. I do 3 things every time before I get nervous in a big presentation or meeting that I'm running. First and foremost, I will take a deep belly breath. The be— breathing seems to work really, really well for me. It just calms me down, helps me be more present. Second thing I'll do is I will hold something cold in the palms of my hand. This is a trick to reduce blushing and sweating. We blush and sweat because our core body temperature goes up, your heart's beating faster, your muscles are tensing, so your body thinks it's exercising, right? Your heart rate's going up, your blood pressure is going up. Holding something cold in the palm of your hand cools you down, so it stops me from blushing and sweating. And then the third thing I do, I— silly— I will always say a tongue twister. And I say a tongue twister for two reasons. Again, it gets me present-oriented, so I'm not worried about the future, and it warms up my voice. You know, any athlete will tell you you should warm up before you do your sport. We should warm up before we speak. So I do those 3 things. That's my anxiety management plan. I've been doing those for over a decade and it helps me. It helps me get centered. It helps me be focused on what I'm doing. So that's an example of an anxiety management plan. In the book, in both books, I give examples of different anxiety management plans.

Yeah, I love also that they have, a lot of them have acronyms as you were mentioning so that you kind of remind yourself of your own acronym.

Right, right, exactly.

Now, Matt, there's another of that when I said to you, I have one more. I have this thing that I do when I gather people for dinner. I hope you would approve of this. I do a table question. I do structured conversation. Oh, I love that. Yeah. So the reason I do this for so many reasons, but one reason is so that people have a chance to meet everybody at the table, 6 people, 8 people, 10 people, 12 people. It's like you're not just gonna talk to the person sitting next to you, you have a sense of who else is at the table. Also, it helps people go a little bit deeper because I think there's a lot that people, because they're not great at small talk, there's a lot of lowest common denominator about the election, politics, oy, oy, or TV shows, right? I'm like, no, no, no, let me ask a question. So I'll ask a question like something you're grateful for, something you're looking forward to. Maybe if I'm going a little deeper, Maybe some feedback you got in your life that really triggered you, but you saw was really helpful for you. You know, any kinds of questions like that. And I think that many people, and then at the end of the dinner, people are like, oh, it was so great. People wanna stay in touch and they feel so close because I feel like I've really activated a really close discussion because people got to know each other. However, I have gotten feedback that people People tell me, Alisa, I know you think your table question is great, but actually the people who are waiting to talk are not listening to the person who is talking. They are nervous about their own moment coming up. And Matt, is there anything I can do to assuage their nervousness in my beloved table question?

So yes, so anxiety is normal and natural. A colleague of mine, when I told, We talked about listening and I teach listening skills and my colleague, fully tongue in cheek, said, "Oh, listening is just what I have to do before I share my opinion." And a lot of us think that, but anything you can do to warm people up. So I don't know, I have never been to your dinner parties. I would love to be invited.

Maybe one day.

But I don't know if it's like, now let's sit down and have our conversation and we're We're going to start our talk. That puts a lot of pressure on it.

I'm wondering if there's some ways—

Yeah, OK. So when I try to help people who feel that way, a lot of people tell me when they go into meetings where they know certain topics will be discussed, they get that same feeling. It's like, I'm really nervous because I have to contribute or want to contribute something, and I'm just waiting for my turn to contribute when it's appropriate. And I'm not paying attention. Anything you can do to help people sort of loosen up. So maybe you have an icebreaker in a meeting. Maybe people— you encourage people to engage in small talk before they come to the table just so they get used to the idea or just so they get used to sharing. Another thing that can really work is having some facilitation. So I know at a dinner party, having a facilitator probably would feel awkward, but there might be ways to invite people in who you see might when people seem a little nervous and say, "Oh, you know, do you want to start or would you like to contribute now to the conversation?" Just to get that over with because a lot of pressure people feel is, "I don't know when I get to contribute. I just know I want to contribute or I have to contribute." So anything you can do to make that easier or less high stakes, reduce some of the friction there, I think would be helpful. That's great. But it's— you know, I love that you do that. I'm actually have a dinner coming coming up in 2 weeks where they've already sent out the table topic that we're discussing, you know. And what's the table topic? Uh, well, it's a shock surprise, you know, AI's impact on communication. And this is a bunch of communication folks, right? And the pressure I'm feeling is that I feel like I actually have to study up, you know, because they sent it out so far in advance. I'm like, they are expecting brilliance here, and that's making me a little nervous.

Take the pressure off. Right. Matt, I have a few more questions for you, but before I ask them, I want to know, is there anything we missed in terms of some of the key tools that you offer people, or any question I didn't ask on a thing that everybody asks you about?

Lovely for you to give me that opportunity. The one thing that I'm often asked about, and we haven't talked about it yet, is this notion of how to be clear and concise. When many people speak, they say more than they need to. And in spontaneous speaking, this happens a lot. When you're put on the spot, people tend to take each other on a journey of discovery of what they want to say as they're saying it. And so being focused, clear, and concise is really important. We live in a world where attention is is the most precious commodity. And if I am distracting you or taking you— too much of your attention, you're going to tune out. So thinking about how do we get really focused is critical. My mother has this saying, "Tell the time, don't build the clock." And many of us are clock builders. And so the best way I think to get focus is one, leverage structure. That's not a surprise since we've talked about that. But two, really focus on what's relevant for your audience. Use that as the starting point and then build your argument from the most relevant salient thing for your audience because that also will help you be more concise and help your audience pay more attention. Yeah, that's beautiful.

That's really, really helpful. So, Matt, I have two questions. I always, you know, I have a lot of founders on this show, obviously mostly founders. I have two questions I always ask founders and I want to ask you the same questions, which the first one is What do you wish you had known earlier on your journey?

Yes, there's so many things I wish I would have known earlier. I'll give you a couple. First, I wish I would have known that respect is more important than being liked. When I was first a manager and running my organization that I had, I wanted everybody to like me, and that set me up to be taken advantage of, to hold on to things that I should have delegated. And interestingly, when people respected me, came to respect me, they ended up liking me more. So that was a big lesson. The other lesson is just do it, you know, just the Nike saying. So many of us are afraid of doing things because we're afraid of being embarrassed, we're afraid of the potential consequences. But I tell you, in hindsight, the regret is worse. And the situations that I thought would be really awkward or bad in the long run didn't turn out to be that way. So, that's the other thing is just, you know, if you want to call up an old friend, if you want to ask somebody for advice, if you want to get somebody's opinion or potential investment, just go for it because the regret and the concern after the fact, you know, is heavy. And so, just try. And I'm not saying do unreasonable reasonable, crazy things. But a lot of us are held back by our own concern about the potential future consequence. And in hindsight, that consequences, all in my life at least, has almost always been far less than I was afraid it would have been.

Yeah, such good advice. I know, it's so important, Matt. I love it. Yeah. And, and I, and I, and I appreciate also, you know, where that's coming from, from you, from you. Like, all of us, it's like what we had known earlier on our journeys comes from this like hard-earned lesson in a way. I know.

So I think the only benefit for getting old that I can see is the wisdom.

So I know it's so true. And what advice do you have for founders as they, as they grow on their journey to become leaders? Yeah.

Well, coming from my perspective, you know, I'm gonna get very tactical and practical, set up an effective communication infrastructure. Many founders don't put a premium on communication. In fact, many see it as a necessary evil, like, "I just got to get through this," when in fact, building a communication infrastructure— and I don't just mean the tools, tools are important, but the people and the processes around communication are really important. I'll give you two examples. When you're hiring and growing your business, please, in your interviews, think about and talk about communication. Ask, "How do you like to be be communicated to. Give me an example of a time where you feel you communicated really well and a time where you didn't. Make it important for people to see that communication is something that is valued in the organization. And then second, at the end of meetings or interactions, spend a minute debriefing what happened in terms of communication in the meeting. Not rehashing the issues, but say something like, Alisa, it was so valuable when you paraphrased midway through because it got that got us back on track. Or, you know, there was a time in the meeting where everybody was talking at once and people were interrupting and that didn't feel good. So this notion of trying to improve the communication and calling it out, I think makes a tremendous difference. And I'll tell you why. I'm not trying to take myself— I mean, in some ways, I'm trying to put myself out of a job. I am often brought in to smaller companies as they're growing because they're having communication troubles. And if you do some of these things I'm suggesting, then you don't Do they need me? And the very first thing I will do just to check is I'll— I always look at how many meetings are being had and what— how many people are attending those meetings. People use meetings as a band-aid for bigger communication challenges. So, think about how you can avoid those challenges and wherever you're at right now in your business, think about how many meetings you're having, how many people are attending meetings, what are these meetings trying to fix that might be broken elsewhere? And how can you address those issues?

Matt, that is so wise. So two things. First of all, I always invite my founders and all the leaders I coach to put together a personal operating manual, right? So like, this is the tool, this is the keys to me. And so then also put together one yourself. That's the keys to you in terms of how do you like to communicate it with, how do you like to get things done, how do you like to, you know, get feedback, you know, all these different— all the behavior. What does it mean when I do this or when I do that? So those behaviors I think are really important because it really showcases communication style and so many things of style, so many elements of style. And then the second thing that you just said that I have to ask you, when you say meetings mask other communication challenges, do you have an example of that?

Yeah, so there— I'm not going to name the company, but but I was brought into a company that was having a lot of trouble around communication. And when I went in, I said, "Okay, I want to look at—" I looked at 5 leaders at different levels of the organization. I said, "I just want to look at their calendars." And I saw the number of meetings they were having and I saw the number of people appearing in the meetings. And what was happening was senior leadership was not doing a good job of pushing out prioritization. And so people were people were all trying to join these meetings to get a sense of what the heck they were supposed to be doing and what the leaders were thinking. So these meetings would have 20, 30 people in them and they weren't effective at all. So those senior leaders are complaining, "Our meetings aren't effective. Too many are showing up." And they were actually creating the problem that led to the meeting bloat. And so once we started saying, "Okay, how can we propagate information and messaging out?" Then we step back and right-sized and rationalized the meetings made a huge difference. So often meetings are the canary in the coal mine for ineffective communication. I love it. So good, Matt.

So good. Thank you. It was so great to talk to you. Yes. Thank you for your contribution. I want to just remind everybody the book is called Think Faster, Talk Smarter. Go pick it up for these and many more tips from Matt Abrahams.

Thank you so much, Alisa Cohn. Thank you.

Thanks for listening to From Startup to Grownup. If you like what you heard, give it a review on Apple Podcasts so other people can find it. And if you know of a founder or someone else who is meant to be on this podcast, drop me a line through my website, alisacohn.com.