How to speak more confidently and persuasively | Matt Abrahams (professor, speaker, author)

Visualization is a really useful technique. And you see yourself not just in the moment of speaking, but getting up to the stage, seeing it being well-received, thinking about how you step off the stage. We see athletes do this kind of thing all the time, and there's good research to say that this desensitizes people.

Most of the public speaking we do is on the spot. It's not often you give a prepared talk.

You actually have to prepare to be spontaneous, and that's counterintuitive, but when you think about it in athletics or jazz music, it's like, of course, you would prepare and practice.

Are there any other techniques that you love, that you find people find really helpful in calming their anxiety?

Strive for connection over perfection by daring to be dull. Just answer the question. Just give the feedback. Just be engaged in the small talk. By doing that, you dial down the volume of self-evaluation, freeing up resources that can be used to really help you succeed.

(Instrumental music) Today, my guest is Matt Abrahams. Matt is a professor at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, where he teaches a very popular class on communication and public speaking. He's also the host of the incredibly popular podcast, Think Fast, Talk Smart, and the author of the very popular book, Think Faster and Talk Smarter. Matt also coaches people one-on-one on public speaking and communication skills. And in our conversation, we focus on the two areas that people most need help with. One, reducing their anxiety before and during any form of public speaking, and getting better at speaking on the spot, including giving better toasts, giving feedback, doing Q&A, and even apologizing. Like we talk about in the actual conversation, speaking well is a superpower in your career, for interviewing, for being great in meetings, for pitching your manager on ideas, to leading teams. And this skill becomes even more important as you grow in your career. The good news is that you can get better at it with a bit of help. I've worked on this a lot over the course of my career, and I still get really nervous before big talks, and even before every podcast episode. But many of these techniques I actually put into practice, and I share that in our conversation. If you pick just a couple things from this episode to put into practice, you will become a better communicator, you'll be less nervous, and you'll get better at dealing with on-the-spot moments. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. It's the best way to avoid missing future episodes, and it helps the podcast tremendously. With that, I bring you Matt Abrahams, after a short word from our sponsors. Let me tell you about a product called Sprig. Next-gen product teams like Figma and Notion rely on Sprig to build products that people love. Sprig is an AI-powered platform that enables you to collect relevant product experience insights from the right users, so you can make product decisions quickly and confidently. Here's how it works. It all starts with Sprig's precise targeting, which allows you to trigger in-app studies based on users' characteristics and actions taken in-product. Then, Sprig's AI is layered on top of all studies to instantly surface your product's biggest learnings. Sprig's surveys enables you to target specific users to get relevant and timely feedback. Sprig Replays enables you to capture targeted session clips to see your product experience firsthand. Sprig's AI is a game-changer for product teams. They're the only platform with product-level AI, meaning it analyzes data across all of your studies to centralize the most important product opportunities, trends, and correlations in one real-time feed. Visit sprig.com/lenny to learn more and get 10% off. That's S-P-R-I-G.com/lenny. This episode is brought to you by Dovetail, the customer insights hub for product teams. Are you working in a feature factory building filler that nobody wants? Probably, because the sad truth is that most SaaS features are rarely or never used, costing the industry billions every year. Let's change that. Product managers, Dovetail is holding their first industry conference. It's called Insight Out, and they want you to come. Over one day in San Francisco, the product community is coming together to learn how to better leverage customer insights and build products that people actually love to use. It's on April 11th, and you can hear from product leaders from Uber, Twitch, Meta, and Netflix, as they share their strategies for driving innovation, thriving in uncertainty, and balancing customer-centered work with business needs. And here's the kicker, it's absolutely free for online tickets. Just go to dovetail.com/lenny to register. This is thanks to Dovetail, the best way for product teams to get the most out of customer insights. Check it out at dovetail.com/lenny. Matt, thank you so much for being here, and welcome to the podcast.