Think Fast Talk Smart: Communication Techniques

Unlike most of you, probably, I had just written a book about creativity. And a month later, this tool that's amazing for creativity came out. And I look in the index of my own book. The AI is not even in it.

In your book, Difficult Conversations, you emphasize the importance of understanding the underlying emotions and assumptions in tough conversations.

One of the things that I found really interesting about Difficult Conversations is that by the time something becomes a difficult conversation, we've got at least two problems. We've got whatever we're disagreeing about on the surface. . . But if it's a difficult conversation, typically there's a deeper issue, which is how we each feel treated in how we're navigating this together.

In Difficult Conversations, we talk about that story itself having three key components. One is I'm preoccupied with what I'm pretty sure I'm right about. The second is whose fault is it that we're having this problem? And the third is why are you acting this way?

She's also the co-author of the bestselling books, Difficult Conversations, and Thanks for the Feedback.

Her latest book is Unforgettable Presence. Get Seen, Get Seen, Gain Influence, and Catapult Your Career.

I created the Epic Career Brand Framework because when it comes to thinking about our brands, creating our brands, our reputation, it can feel a little bit intimidating.

I had the chance to interview Daniel Pink for my book, which was very exciting. And he has some great advice around communication, keeping things clear, concise.

He teaches the super popular course, The Paths to Power. And he's the author of many books, including his latest, which is called Seven Rules of Power.

I'm reading Creativity Inc. by Ed Catmull, the guy who founded Pixar. And he's talking about this very dilemma, exactly. The people that work for him that are the overthinkers versus the people that are quick to pull the trigger.

And he says, you know, the overthinkers make mistakes at the same rate as the people that are quick to pull the trigger. It just takes them longer to make the mistakes because they're overthinking it.

I've been working for a while now on a book that's tentatively titled Fixing Hierarchy. And as you can hear in the name, it's because I think that a lot of hierarchies in organizations and in society are fundamentally broken.

The recipe can be captured with just three letters. The acronym is CPR.

Drawing from his book, Speaking Up without Freaking Out, he shares expert-backed techniques for structuring responses, managing audience expectations, and maintaining composure under pressure.

Audio excerpt based on Speaking Up without Freaking Out by Matt Abrahams (printed book by Kendall Hunt Publishing 2016), read by the author.

My advice for novice and nervous speakers is to take your questions at the end of your presentation.

To help your audience understand your answers, invoke the ADD method of answering questions. A, answer the question. One clear declarative sentence. D, detail a specific concrete example that supports your answer. D, describe the benefits that explain why your answer is relevant to the asker.

If you like what you heard, consider checking out the new audiobook version of Speaking Up without Freaking Out on Spotify or fastersmarter.io slash speaking up.

Before we get started, I wanted to let you know that my first book, Speaking Up without Freaking Out is now available as an audio book on Spotify.

Thousands of people have found value from the print version of Speaking Up without Freaking Out. Now you can listen to it.

I think I will say Ebbinghaus for that, who's a pioneer of memory research. And the reason for that is he studied forgetting curves.

And the way he revolutionized the field or our understanding of memory is his conveying of this so clearly, such that many people, in fact, do not forget the learnings from his work.

He is the recipient of the MIT Sloan Teacher of the Year Award and is also the author of Persuading with Data, a guide to designing, delivering, and defending your data.

The thing to focus on first is getting focused on what's relevant. Having really clear logical support. And so one of the tools that we teach, I talk about in length in Persuading with Data, my book, is this idea of a Minto pyramid, which is, there's many tools to do this, but this is one really flexible tool to just get your logic really solid and clear.

Matt is a professor in the Department of Psychology at UCLA, where he focuses on Social cognitive neuroscience. [...] Matt is also the author of Social, Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect.

A lot of it as the author of The Long Game. I am a supporter of the idea of taking a step back periodically and taking inventory and looking at our career arc.

One of the things that, and this is the very first thing I talk about in my book, The Science of Personal Power, is the blame is the antithesis of personal power.

And so I spent a year here in Silicon Valley looking at pitches that got funded in the boardrooms, in big pitch events, big conferences like TechCrunch Disrupt, after seeing hundreds of pitches a month. And finally, it just clicked. Like every pitch that wins has this exact structure.

He has authored numerous books, including Love Your Enemies and Build the Life You Want, The Art and Science of Getting Happier, co-written with Oprah Winfrey.

I really enjoyed your book, Build the Life You Want.

He has authored numerous books, including Love Your Enemies and Build the Life You Want, The Art and Science of Getting Happier, co-written with Oprah Winfrey.

So Anne Napolitano, she just wrote this book Hello Beautiful, but I had come in contact with her a couple years ago around one of her books called Dear Edwards.