In the kickoff to our Summer Learning Series, we're revisiting one of our favorite episodes. This interview features Stanford GSB faculty members Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas and gives specific insights into how humor can transform your communication at home and at work. At the time of this episode, their book Humor, Seriously was just set to launch. Connect: Premium Signup >>>> Think Fast Talk Smart Premium Email Questions & Feedback >>> [email protected] Epis...
Jul 05, 2022•32 min•Season 4Ep. 62
All communication comes from a place of creativity and creativity is rooted in design. In this episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart , strategic communications lecturer and podcast host Matt Abrahams interviews four authors from the Stanford d.school. Each conversation challenges convention in how we approach our communication, be it visual, body language, or speech. Listen to this episode to hear more from Ashish Goel , author of Drawing on Courage ; Susie Wise , author of Design for Belonging ; Ca...
Jun 21, 2022•35 min•Season 4Ep. 61
“It's not reassuring when we don't know the answers to critically important questions involved in health and wellbeing. But it's far more of a problem if we try to pretend we do.” In this episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart , Stanford Medical School dean Lloyd Minor sits down with podcast host Matt Abrahams to discuss transparency in leadership. “Rather than pushing ambiguity away, we should lean into it, and use it as a stimulus to guide our communication in more effective ways.” They also discus...
Jun 07, 2022•18 min•Season 3Ep. 60
Why do we do what we do? What factors drive us? And how do things like competition with others help us achieve our goals? These are the questions most interesting to Szu-chi Huang , an associate professor of marketing with a specific interest in motivation. “Competition definitely increases motivation,” says Huang. “It makes attaining the goal more valuable.” In this episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart , Huang and host Matt Abrahams explore the intersection of human psychology, behavior, and goal ...
May 24, 2022•21 min•Season 3Ep. 59
In relationships between imperfect people, mistakes are inevitable. And when we find ourselves with damaged connections, it’s a specific kind of communication that can help us make amends. Fred Luskin is the Director of the Stanford University Forgiveness Project, and has devoted much of his career to researching the way forgiveness affects our psychological, relational, and physical health. “Apology is one of the few things that research shows actually facilitates forgiveness,” Luskin explains....
May 10, 2022•19 min•Season 3Ep. 58
“Listening actively and deeply happens when I genuinely believe that the person who's speaking has intrinsic worth and brings a perspective that I lack and need.” This episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart features Kristin Hansen , lecturer in management and executive director of Civic Health Project, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization working to reduce extreme polarization and foster healthier civil discourse in U.S. citizenry, politics, and media. Together with host Matt Abrahams, Hansen shares...
Apr 26, 2022•17 min•Season 3Ep. 57
“Anyone can make a complicated thing sound complicated. It takes real skill to make it sound simple.” This episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart features Steve Blank , seasoned entrepreneur, marketer, and Stanford adjunct professor in the Department of Management Science and Engineering. “Messages need to be memorable,” he tells podcast host and strategic communications lecturer Matt Abrahams. “The more memorable the message, the greater its ability to create change.” Blank teaches courses on Lean S...
Apr 12, 2022•21 min•Season 3Ep. 56
“Very often, you are not designing for yourself. And you kind of have to get out of your own way to effectively design with others’ needs in mind.” In this podcast episode, lecturer Matt Abrahams is joined by Sarah Stein Greenberg , Director of the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, aka the Stanford d.school , and author of Creative Acts for Curious People: How to Think, Create, and Lead in Unconventional Ways . Together, Greenberg and Abrahams discuss how design and communication require seein...
Mar 29, 2022•21 min•Season 3Ep. 55
“A mistake that some leaders make is to assume that the people in your organization share your core values. Some of the time some of them do, but there's a bunch who don't, and those are the most difficult sorts of situations.” In this episode, Political Science professors Neil Malhotra and Ken Shotts sit down with host and lecturer Matt Abrahams, to discuss how to lead others whose values may not align with your own. “The most effective thing you can do is to understand the other person's story...
Mar 15, 2022•25 min•Season 3Ep. 54
“You’re not going to hit the mark with everybody, but you still need to be mindful of everybody,” says Jonathan Levav , the King Philanthropies Professor of Marketing. “That’s critical to create an environment where communication is effective.” In this episode, Levav sits down with podcast host Matt Abrahams to talk about the science behind decision fatigue, how to lead effectively while working from home, and how to create the right company culture both in the office and online. The right commu...
Mar 01, 2022•22 min•Season 3Ep. 53
In this episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart , host Matt Abrahams sits down with finance professors Jonathan Berk and Jules van Binsbergen to talk about their new podcast, All Else Equal . Connect: Premium Signup >>>> Think Fast Talk Smart Premium Email Questions & Feedback >>> [email protected] Episode Transcripts >>> Think Fast Talk Smart Website Newsletter Signup + English Language Learning >>> FasterSmarter.io Think Fast Talk Smart >>> Li...
Feb 16, 2022•21 min•Season 3Ep. 52
In this 50th episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart , host Matt Abrahams and executive producer Jenny Luna share the winners' plans from our Confident Communicator Challenge and offer new, research-backed techniques for managing nervousness both before and during your communication. Thank you to many, many listeners from all over the world who sent in their anxiety management plans. Connect: Premium Signup >>>> Think Fast Talk Smart Premium Email Questions & Feedback >>> hell...
Feb 10, 2022•13 min•Season 3Ep. 51
“Make them want to turn the page,” says Paula Moya , a professor at Stanford University and author of The Social Imperative: Race, Close Reading, and Contemporary Literary Criticism . In this episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart , Moya sits down with strategic communication lecturer Matt Abrahams to share how the elements of story can be used in other types of communication. Create compelling situations, full of sense and surprise, she says. Create characters we can empathize with; speak your writt...
Feb 02, 2022•20 min•Season 3Ep. 50
“We have to make data emotional because emotions are what drive us to act,” says Chip Heath , a professor of organizational behavior and author of the new book, Making Numbers Count: The Art of Science of Communicating Numbers . In this interview with host Matt Abrahams, Heath talks about ways that data and statistics can be used to illuminate — or obscure — our message. “A lot of people in the world don’t understand numbers like the numbers people,” he says. “And there are a lot of untranslated...
Jan 18, 2022•18 min•Season 3Ep. 49
“Eighty five percent of people report being nervous about speaking in public, and I believe the other 15% are lying,” says Matt Abrahams, lecturer in Strategic Communication and podcast host. “What is it about speaking in front of others that makes most of us nervous? Well, those of us who study this ubiquitous fear believe it is part of our human condition.” In this special episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart , Matt Abrahams returns to one of the podcast's main goals: helping people become more c...
Jan 05, 2022•25 min•Season 3Ep. 48
“Great founders are great storytellers,” says Stanford Graduate School of Business professor Stephanos Zenios in this “Quick Thinks” episode . Zenios is the director of the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies and heads Startup Garage , a project-based course where teams design and test business concepts that address real-world problems. “Founders have to tell a story to their customer so that they can inspire them to test and use their new product. They have to tell a story to their employees to ...
Dec 14, 2021•8 min•Season 3Ep. 47
“To be creative, ideas must be both novel and useful. That’s the definition that we use in creativity research,” says Justin Berg , an assistant professor of organizational behavior at Stanford Graduate School of Business. But, he warns: “Novel ideas are often not very useful and useful ideas are often not very novel.” In this episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart , Berg sits down with lecturer and podcast host Matt Abrahams to share lessons from his work on creativity, which has included conducting...
Dec 03, 2021•21 min•Season 3Ep. 46
In each episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart , Stanford GSB lecturer and podcast host Matt Abrahams asks his guests the same question: “What are the first three ingredients in a successful communication recipe?” Answers have ranged from specific and poetic, to impactful and thought-provoking. In this episode, we bring you some favorite responses, as well as Matt’s tips for solving three common communication challenges that tend to arise during the holiday season. Connect: Premium Signup >>>...
Nov 18, 2021•14 min•Season 3Ep. 45
"Leadership is a role that you play, like a part you play in other people’s lives. And [your] expression of that role is your responsibility as a leader,” says Stanford GSB lecturer Melissa Jones Briggs . Jones Briggs’ work combines techniques from the theater with social science research to teach lessons about power and communication. In this conversation with host Matt Abrahams, she discusses how acting in a leadership position requires staying present and also knowing when to step back. “Powe...
Nov 11, 2021•19 min•Season 3Ep. 44
“Social psychologists believe that if we want to understand our own behavior and the behavior of others, the first thing we have to ask or notice is, ‘What is the situation in which they are performing, in which they are behaving?’ And then we want to know as much about the situation as possible.” In this episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart , Stanford emeritus psychology professor Phillip Zimbardo sits down with host Matt Abrahams to discuss how time influences our perception and our positive or n...
Oct 28, 2021•19 min•Season 3Ep. 43
Being a better listener has a lot to do with silence, says Collins Dobbs , a lecturer in management at Stanford Graduate School of Business. “A lot of people are uncomfortable with the smallest modicum of silence, but learning often happens when we create distance for useful reflection.” In this episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart , Dobbs talks with host Matt Abrahams about the importance of “space, pace, and grace” when you’re receiving others’ feedback and handling the emotions that come out dur...
Oct 15, 2021•24 min•Season 3Ep. 42
“Part of teamwork is dating,” says Stefanos Zenios , The Investment Group of Santa Barbara Professor of Entrepreneurship and Professor of Operations, Information & Technology. “Dating each other to see whether you can work well together. It’s about developing how you will speak with each other in the team, how you will manage difficult conversations, and how to be respectful, but also how to help each other grow.” In this episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart , host Matt Abrahams sits down with ...
Sep 30, 2021•19 min•Season 3Ep. 41
“Stress is natural, stress is inevitable when you're living a life that's connected with things you care about. And learning how to embrace it, learning how to work with it is really what helps us thrive and grow and perform at our highest level, according to psychologist and associate professor at Stanford, Alia Crum . In this episode, Crum talks with host and lecturer Matt Abrahams about her research and findings as principal investigator of the Stanford Mind and Body Lab where she is focusing...
Sep 16, 2021•25 min•Season 3Ep. 40
In this episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart , lecturer and podcast host Matt Abrahams sits down with David Eagleman , a neuroscientist and the host of the PBS series The Brain , to discuss why our brains are wired for storytelling and how new senses might impact our connection and communication with others. “I’ve always been really interested in this idea of how we can pass information to the brain via unusual channels," Eagleman says. "We’ve got our eyes or ears or fingertips and our nose, we’re ...
Sep 02, 2021•21 min•Season 3Ep. 39
“One of the things I think is really exciting about all this, and perhaps a little bit frightening, is nobody actually knows how to do it. It is not something that we’ve ever done before. And I’ve studied a lot of globally distributed work, and virtual teams, and so forth. But hybrid work is not that and it’s not telecommuting, which we know a bit about. But it’s something that is a mix of these multiple different modes of working,” says Pamela Hinds , Fortinet Founders Chair and professor of ma...
Aug 19, 2021•20 min•Season 2Ep. 38
In this episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart , Stanford GSB Lecturer Robert Siegel sits down with Matt Abrahams to discuss the role of communication in helping businesses to adapt and transform and his new book The Brains and Brawn Company: How Leading Organizations Blend the Best of Digital and Physical Specifically . “You have to see how things are interacting with each other. You have to see how your organization is interacting both internally and externally. And so what we found is that great s...
Aug 05, 2021•23 min•Season 2Ep. 37
In this episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart , Sara Singe r, a professor of organizational behavior (by courtesy) at Stanford Graduate School of Business and a professor of medicine at Stanford School of Medicine, sits down with lecturer Matt Abrahams to discuss the role of open communication in high-performing teams. “Learning requires leadership that reinforces learning, a supportive environment, including especially psychological safety, but also an appreciation for differences when you’re worki...
Jul 15, 2021•22 min•Season 2Ep. 36
“I say sometimes that leadership is a journey into yourself. It’s self-renewal, self-reflection, self-confidence. It’s going to bed kind of scratching your head and saying, “Man, I’m not as good,” and waking up the next morning and trying it again — and I think that’s what matters.” In this episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart , former CEO of General Electric and Stanford Graduate School of Business lecturer Jeff Immelt sits down with lecturer Matt Abrahams to discuss communicating during times of ...
Jun 25, 2021•23 min•Season 2Ep. 35
“Simple language, forceful language, vivid language, and keeping it simple and direct,” says Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer , are all tools to increase the strength of your communication. In this episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart , host and lecturer Matt Abrahams interviews Jeffrey Pfeffer, author of Dying for a Paycheck , about the verbal and nonverbal ways we can harness, or give away, our authority in communication. To hear more from Jeffrey, listen to Pfeffer on Power , a podcast about accelerati...
Jun 03, 2021•21 min•Season 2Ep. 34
“There’s no difference between the physiological response to something that you’re excited about and something that you’re nervous about or dreading,” says Andrew Huberman , associate professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford University. In this podcast episode, Huberman talks with host and lecturer Matt Abrahams about his research on the autonomic continuum, a spectrum between states of very high alertness or fear, all the way down to deep sleep, and shares how to better-use the s...
May 13, 2021•29 min•Season 2Ep. 33
