Stanford Business School Lecturer Matt Abrahams: You have to prepare to be spontaneous

Structurally, there's similarity in how a business tycoon receives a commendation and a Bollywood actor winning an award: both can use the TAKE framework for their acceptance speeches, explains Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) Lecturer Matt Abrahams.

(The T in TAKE is for giving thanks, A is for acknowledging others who helped make the project or film possible, K is for keeping the momentum going by explaining what comes next, and E is for ending graciously.)

It's exactly the kind of takeaway you'd expect from a conversation with Abrahams. His latest book, Think Faster Talk Smarter (released in India by Pan Macmillan in late September 2023), emphasizes using such structures as one of six ways to improve spontaneous communication. The book draws its title from Stanford GSB's three-year-old podcast Think Fast Talk Smart, which is also about effective communication.

Over a video call from California, Abrahams spoke at length about his book, the six steps to communicating more effectively in spontaneous conversations (such as a sudden demand for feedback), and how they can help in multiple scenarios from job interviews to addressing a roomful of employees worried about layoffs and asking the company board for more funds. Edited excerpts:

Why do so many of us struggle with communicating effectively?

Effective communication is hard for many reasons. One, we often start from the wrong place. We start by thinking about what I want to say, rather than what our audience needs to hear. And that's a fundamental difference. If we're focusing on what we want to get across without thinking about the needs of the people we're speaking to, we might miss an opportunity to be specific or relevant. The way to fix that is to focus on the needs of your audience.

Now, when it comes to spoken communication, for sure, and sometimes written communication, another barrier is anxiety. A lot of us get very nervous in high-stakes communication situations; we want to show that we know what we're talking about, we want to do it well, and that puts a tremendous amount of pressure on us.

And then the third is that we have all this information to get across and we just do a big dump of that information; we don't take time to logically connect our ideas. So instead of listing information, we should package it in terms of frameworks or structures to help our audience.

The bottom line is, we start from the wrong place, we get nervous, and we just list information. Those are the three things that get in the way of effective communication.

How do you define spontaneous communication? Could you give examples?

If you think about it, most of our communication is spontaneous. It's in the moment. We plan a presentation or a pitch or a meeting, but those happen much more infrequently than answering a question, giving feedback, making small talk, having to apologize, fixing a mistake we make - all of those are very, very common. So, most of our communication is not planned, it's spontaneous.

The book is all about how to be more comfortable and confident in moments of spontaneous speaking. And it divides into a methodology where there's six steps, the first four are all about mindset, and then the second two are about how we actually message in those moments.

Could you talk us through the six points?

The first four steps are all about mindset. And the first of those is anxiety management. Anxiety looms large in these spontaneous speaking situations, in fact, in any communication situation. There are things we have to do to manage our anxiety. Notice I don't say overcome; I don't think we can ever truly overcome our anxiety, but we can learn to manage it. And to manage anxiety, we have to take a two-pronged approach. It's about symptoms and sources. Symptoms are the things that we physiologically experience; might be sweaty brow, shakiness in the hands, rapid heart rate. And then sources are the things that initiate or exacerbate that anxiety. For example, many of us get very nervous because we have a goal when we communicate. If I'm an entrepreneur, I want to make money. If I'm a student, I want to get a good grade. And what makes us nervous is (thinking) I will not achieve those goals.

There are things we can do to manage both symptoms and sources. For example, deep belly breathing. If you've ever done yoga, or tai chi, where you really fill your lower abdomen, that can reduce your anxiety response. In terms of fear originating from the goal, that's all about a future state a potential future state. So, if you can get yourself to be present-oriented in the moment, you can reduce the anxiety that comes from not achieving your goal. So, step one is about managing anxiety.

The second step in the process is getting out of our own way. We want to communicate right, we want to do it perfectly, we want to do well. And the reality is, striving to do it right actually prevents us from doing it well because we're over-judging and evaluating.

I tell my Stanford MBA students - some of the best and brightest young business minds in the world - that they need to maximize their mediocrity and you should see their jaws drop, nobody's ever told them to be mediocre. But here's why: When you are constantly judging and evaluating everything you say, you actually have less cognitive bandwidth to focus on what you're saying.

Your brain is like a computer in many ways - it's not a perfect analogy - if you have lots of apps or windows open on your phone or on your laptop, each one of those apps is performing a little bit under its potential, because so many are running at once. Our brains are like that. If I'm evaluating and judging, I have less bandwidth to focus on what I'm saying. When you reduce the pressure on yourself, (and say) 'just get the job done, just be mediocre,' you actually free up resources to do it really well. So at the end of my very first class, I end by saying, maximize mediocrity to achieve greatness. And my students get it because they understand that by turning down that dial of judgement and evaluation, they increase the likelihood that they'll perform well. So that's step two, get out of your own way.

Step three has to do with how we frame these spontaneous situations. If I were to go to you and say, 'Hey, after this talk, you have to go take some questions from your boss,' you would probably say, 'Oh, no, I don't want to do that. I've got to do well, I have to protect my reputation, I have to make sure that I defend my position.' So, we tend to see these situations as one of defence, testing and challenging, which works against us. It makes us restricted in our bodies and our voice. It makes our answers - if it's q&a - really short. Our tone is curt and harsh. If we reframe these situations as opportunities; if somebody is asking me questions, even if they're challenging, this is an opportunity for me to share, for me to learn, for me to collaborate. And if I take that opportunistic mindset, it totally changes the way I approach my communication.

And then step four is all about listening. Most of us don't listen well. We listen just well enough to get the gist of what somebody is saying. And then we start planning and rehearsing, and we disengage. But in fact, in spontaneous communication, you have to pay very close attention and listen, so you can respond to the subtle nuance.

Imagine this, you and I come out of a meeting together, and you turn to me and say, 'What do you think, how did that meeting go?' You're asking for spontaneous feedback. If I just hear 'Oh, she wants feedback', I'm going to start saying, 'Well, you should have done this better or we could have done that better, next time we have to do this.' But if I really would have listened, I might have noticed that you came out the back door, not the front door. When you asked me the question, you were looking down, your voice wasn't its normal, happy self. What I missed was you weren't really asking for feedback, you were actually asking for support. And because I didn't listen intently to what you said, how you said it in the context, I actually made things worse. So those are the first four steps: anxiety, getting out of your own way, reframing as positive, and then listening.

So, if you're feeling anxious and notice that you are responding a little bit more tersely than you would like, is there a way to course-correct during that conversation? Or does the reflection only come afterwards?

It (reflection) hopefully comes afterwards, so you can learn from it. But if in the moment, when you're speaking, you feel like it's not going well or you're not getting the point across, you need to adjust.

I don't talk about this in the book, but there's this notion of meta-communication, meta-awareness. In the midst of communication, I might recognize that what's going on is not towards the goal I'm trying to achieve. So I need to adjust.

For example, let's imagine I were in the midst of a meeting and I noticed that many of the people in the meeting are getting distracted or turning away. I should not put the premium on getting through my material. Many people feel success in communication is just getting their material out. That's foolish. The real goal is to make sure people understand what you're saying. And if people are disengaging, I need to adjust. Maybe I ask a question. Maybe I take a break. Maybe I pause and say let's reflect on what we've just covered and how it impacts our jobs. So if I notice something, and again - it's not just one person, you should look for patterns among people - and if you see patterns, you should then stop and adjust in the moment.

Now to your point, when I'm done with a meeting or when I'm done at the end of my day, I should reflect on what worked and what didn't work in my communication. So I can learn and improve. Many of us follow the maxim that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. Yet we do that in our communication; we just jump from one communication to the other without thinking what worked, what did not work, what should I change.

What is the role of preparation in reducing the anxiety around conversations that we might be having spontaneously, but we can sort of foresee that these situations will occur?

The big, counterintuitive notion in my book is twofold: the first one is that we can all get better at this, Many people feel that you're either born with the ability to speak in the moment or not; you have the gift of the gab or not. And that's not true, we can all learn to get better at it. I've seen it in my own life, the people I coach, the people I teach, we can all get better. So that's the first counterintuitive notion.

The second counterintuitive notion is that you have to prepare to be spontaneous. And a lot of people are like, but isn't that aren't those complete opposites? No, if you think about many things in your life, you absolutely prepare to be spontaneous. If you've ever played a sport, you do drills you practice. Why so that when you're in the game, you can respond in an agile way. If you're a jazz musician, you don't just play random notes. You've practice certain chord progressions and way that certain notes and melodies go together. So that when you are improvising and playing jazz, you can pull together the right elements. So yes, you absolutely can prepare in practice. That's what helps you get better when you're in the moment of the spontaneous situations.

Let's play this out in a few scenarios. Say, you're going for a job interview...

Much of a job interview is spontaneous; you don't know the questions they're going to ask. But you can certainly, in advance, think of what types of questions they might ask. In fact, you can ask friends and say, 'What would you ask if you were interviewing me for a job?' You can use generative AI and say, 'I'm interviewing for this job at this company; give me three or four potential questions.' So there's a lot you can do to get potential information to help you. A job interview is a classic example of where you should spend time thinking about what are some key points I want to get across, and what are some potential questions they would ask. And think through your answers.

Second scenario: say you're a startup pitching to investors. What are the things that you need to keep in mind? Obviously, people who have startups speak about their startups in different scenarios - how do you repackage that information for the audience that is in front of you at that time?

Think Faster, Talk Smarter

I work with entrepreneurs all the time in my consulting practice; my students, many of them, are entrepreneurs or go on to be entrepreneurs. You have to understand what the investment thesis is of the VCs or the investors, what is it that they're really looking for? How can you connect what you do to what they're looking for, explore other investments that they have made, where they've had success and where they haven't had success. If a company an investment firm was invested in three, certain types of companies that haven't done well, and you're similar to those, you might be better off differentiating yourself. But if they've had success with three other companies, and you're similar to those, you might want to emphasize how you're similar. So really thinking about what's important to them, looking at their portfolio.

The other thing you have to think about is, in all communication, what you say is important, but how you say it (is important too). I do a lot of work for VCs and private equity firms. The people who do the investing they tell me all the time: 'Ideas are important to invest in, but people are more important to invest in.' So they're looking not just for your message, but they're looking to see: 'Are you confident? Are you collaborative with your co-founders? Do you demonstrate grit and tenacity?' So how you deliver your message becomes important as well; you can have an amazing slide deck, but if you don't demonstrate your authentic self, and what drives you and motivates you, that deck or pitch doesn't really matter.

Third scenario: You are a company chief. You're addressing a town hall full of employees who are either concerned about layoffs, or about the economy or generally want to know more about what's coming in the next few quarters. What advice do you have for a CEO or a CFO that is addressing this big team?

Right, so you actually did my work for me, which is really thinking about what's of most concern to the people in the audience. If you're going to be doing potential layoffs, then you need to be thinking about (how) people are going to be concerned about what this means for them for their co-workers, for their families. And you might want to help explain that or explain that if it were to come to pass, you would be trying to take care of people. Being transparent, I think, is important. I think being sensitive, not just to the people who might be laid off, but the people who remain - there's this notion of survivor guilt. And so you need to be thinking about that. You need not to be cavalier in your messaging, you should think through your messaging, you should make sure often in these situations, the leader is not the only one speaking, others on the leadership team might speak, there needs to be consistency in messaging, there needs to be terminology that is consistent. So again, this is part of preparation, it doesn't mean necessarily that you memorize what you're saying, or you even write it all down. But you've thought through some of this, and the contingency planning is really important as well. Think through what might happen if somebody asks this question or what might happen if this market event occurs, and then be thinking about those contingencies in advance. So again, preparation is key, what happens in the moment might not be exactly what you plan for, but by virtue of planning, you will be better prepared to address whatever it is that does happen in the moment.

Your book talks about structures in terms of communication. Structurally, what are the similarities or differences between, say, a Bollywood actor receiving an award and a businessperson getting either some sort of award or commendation for the work that they have done?

I'm going to take a step back, and then I'm going to get to answer your question. So to begin, structure is nothing more than a logical connection of ideas. Our brains are not wired for lists in detail. We've all heard somebody who just drones on and on. And when somebody rambles like that, it's very challenging to pay attention. So what structure does is it packages up information easily for your audience to digest, and it also helps you as a speaker, prioritize. There are many, many structures. So it depends on the circumstance to match the right structure. If you're a carpenter and you're building something, you use a certain tool, depending on the task at hand. If I'm trying to screw a screw into a wall, I don't use a wrench and I don't use a hammer, I use a screwdriver. Well, if I'm receiving an award, there's a structure that works better for receiving an award than perhaps giving an update at a board meeting. So you have different structures at the ready. Now, some structures are more generic, and they can apply in many situations, and some are more specific. I'll give you two examples. If I'm a Bollywood actor, which anybody would laugh at to think of that, but if I were a Bollywood actor, and I received an award, I would use a particular approach for receiving that award a particular structure. If I were giving an update to a company meeting, I might use a more generic structure. So if I'm receiving an award, I have a structure, it's not actually in the book, it's an additional structure. So you'll be the first to break the story. And the structure is called TAKE:

T stands for thank you. Thank the audience.

A is acknowledge the accomplishment and perhaps others who are involved.

K is this notion of keep it going, we want to keep the sense of momentum, something positive.

E is you want to end in a way that is very gracious with good gratitude.

So if I'm a Bollywood actor, I might say: 'Thank you to the Academy for nominating me and recognizing the work in this film.' That's the thanks. 'I was not alone, it took a whole crew and fellow cast members to really bring the message of this movie home' - that's acknowledge. 'I and others who worked on this one to keep this momentum going. We're looking at doing a sequel and really bringing more to our adoring audience.' That's the keep it going. And then, 'I'd like to just conclude by thanking, again, the Academy. And all of you who came to enjoy our movie.' That's the end with graciousness.

So TAKE is just a structure.

Similarly, if I'm in a board meeting, and I have to give an update to the board, I might use a more generic structure. It's three questions:

What?

So what?

Now what?

The What is what you're saying. The So what is why it's important. And the Now what is what comes next.

Matt Abrahams

So if I'm giving an update, I might say: 'The success of our most recent product has been far greater than we ever expected.' That's the what. 'Because of the success, we're moving forward with the next iteration of that product, because we want to keep the momentum going.' That's the so what. The now what is: 'I'd like to ask the board to fund an additional $100,000 towards that project.' The 'what, so what, now what' helps me give that update.

Shall we get back to our six points we spoke.

So I just did step five, which is structure.

Step six is the F word of communication. And I say that not to be that naughty one. Its focus. We when we speak spontaneously, more than when we speak in a planned way, we tend to ramble, we tend to, we are discovering what we want to say, as we're saying it. We tend to say more than we need to. We need to be more concise, and clear. My mother has this wonderful saying I know she didn't invent it. But it goes something like this: tell the time don't build the clock. Many of us, when we speak spontaneously, become clock builders: we go through every step and articulate everything we're thinking. Your audience just needs to know the time. So we need to focus our messages.

You can do that by making sure you really think about what's most important to your audience - relevance and prioritization help. And then second, you have to think about what is your goal? And that goal can help you focus. 'What do I want them to know? How do I want them to feel? What do I want them to do?' That helps you focus as well. So the last two steps are about structure and focus. And those together make the six-step process.

If I may play devil's advocate on the last point about focus: as you're speaking with somebody, you're discovering what they want from you; this discovery also takes time, which is where the I think the rambling part comes in. How do you make focus a little bit sharper there?

Two things are behind that question. One is sometimes you need to buy yourself a little more time to think. And you can do that by pausing. Pausing isn't bad, but you can do that by asking clarifying questions as you're alluding to, or paraphrasing, I can just summarize something you've said. And that buys me a little time to think.

So part of your question was, in the spontaneous moments, you need to actually collect your thoughts, and that's going to help you focus. But the other thing that helps you focus, as you rightly said is you have to get clarity on what's relevant and important to your audience. So everybody should stockpile in advance some potential questions you can use or statements you can use to get additional information that can help you. So for example, I love the statement 'Tell me more.' So if you and I are in dialogue, and I'm trying to figure out how to focus my message, and you say something, I might say, tell me a little bit more about that. So I've already thought that through, I know that's something I use all the time. Or I might say, what led you to that conclusion? And this is something another question that I have stockpiled you, as somebody who interviews people, I'm sure you have several go to questions that you tend to use that help you. So if you know them in advance, you can use them, and still in the same time, as you get the answer is begin to focus. So it's, again goes back to that preparation.

You can plan what you want to say, but you don't always know how it is going to be received.

You don't you don't read minds, you mean?

Unfortunately, not yet. But is that something that you think about?

Absolutely. You absolutely need to be thinking about how you could you need to be agile in the moment; this is where listening comes in. You don't know how the other person is going to respond. But because I'm present-oriented, because I'm other-focused, I'm focusing on what you need, I'm going to be in a much better place to respond. And again, if I get a response I'm not expecting or a response. That seems a little odd to me, I can just ask a question, or I can paraphrase what they said, and allow myself a little bit of time to adjust.

I've studied martial arts for 40 years. And what I've learned in my study of karate, is that you never know what your opponent will do. But you know that you can trust your preparation. And you have a particular awareness of what your strengths are and what your areas that aren't so strong. And so you can move things towards your strengths. And so that's how we respond to the unexpected. And quite frankly, that's the beauty of conversation. If everything was scripted out, it would be boring. But if you're in the right place, you can actually enjoy that a lot.

You mentioned your martial arts practice. This is something that we think about a lot in Moneycontrol's lifestyle section - about how fitness helps you focus and get better at your job. 

I'm a big proponent of people finding a physical activity that can help them in their lives. So for me, the martial arts, and I've done it for so long now, for me, it helps me get centered, it helps me get out of my head and into my body. It requires me to be present-oriented. You know, something like the martial arts is if you're not in the moment, you learn the hard way, literally the hard way. And so it really helps me get into that moment of not overthinking to be really present and calm. People think of the martial arts as very physical and violent. And in fact, I emphasized in the more I've done it, that the art form of it, there's a beauty to it, there's an appreciation of the other person. It's really about connection, if you think about it. I encourage everybody to find some physical activity that can help them centre themselves get present-oriented, and teach lessons that you can learn and apply in other everyday life. So it's been very beneficial to me.