Ep. 11 Speaking Up without Freaking Out, Matt Abrahams, Stanford

Join Suzan and Stanford's Matt Abrahams as they discuss tips on being a flexible and impactful presenter, even when anxiety presents itself.


January 2023
ExecU Podcast
Episode 11: Speaking Up without Freaking Out with Matt Abrahams, Stanford University

BRIEF SUMMARY OF EPISODE

Matt Abrahams is a passionate, collaborative and innovative educator and coach. He has published research articles on strategic communication, cognitive planning, persuasion, and interpersonal communication. Matt recently published the third edition of his book Speaking Up Without Freaking Out, a book written to help the millions of people who suffer from anxiety around speaking in public. 

Additionally, Matt developed a software package that provides instant, proscriptive feedback to presenters. Prior to teaching, Matt held senior leadership positions in several leading software companies, where he created and ran global learning and development organizations.

Matt is also founder and principal at TFTS Communications LLC, a presentation and communication skills company based in Silicon Valley that helps people improve their presentation skills. He is also the host of the Stanford GSB podcast called Think Fast Talk Smart: The Podcast, and curator of the NoFreakingSpeaking.com website.

Make sure to subscribe to the ExecU Podcast to learn from the most forward-thinking business professors about how to build a better future. 

KEY TAKEAWAY

 “As our species was evolving where you were within your group, [that’s where] you hung out. It meant survival, it meant  food reproduction, et cetera. So anything that put your status at risk was something you should be very concerned about. And getting up in front of others and doing something embarrassing or wrong could negatively impact your status. And that's why we see anxiety around speaking in front of others across most cultures.” 

Share the podcast:

https://execupodcast.buzzsprout.com/share

Matt’s LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/maabrahams/

No Freaking Speaking Website with resources to help improve your public speaking: https://nofreakingspeaking.com/

Think Fast Talk Smart: The Podcast:

https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/business-podcasts/think-fast-talk-smart-podcast

Matt’s book: Speaking Without Freaking Out
https://nofreakingspeaking.com/thebook/

Sponsored by Viv Higher Ed: 

https://vivhied.com/

Transcript

Matt 0:00

Communication is enacted. Leadership is typically how I define it. So if you wanna be a better leader, you need to improve your communi. Skills. Fundamentally, that's how I focus on communication. That's how I teach about communication, and that's why I think it's so important in business

0:17

welcome to Exec Execute the podcast, bringing you actionable insights from faculty at the world's top business schools. I'm your host, Suzanne Brinker, and today I'm excited to share a conversation with Matt Abrams at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. The conversation will be about his book, speaking Up Without Freaking Out and Public Speaking in general,

Suzan 0:39

hi Matt. It's so great to have you on the show. Welcome.

Matt 0:42

I am thrilled to be here and excited to have a conversation.

0:46

Same here. Maybe let's just start with the journey that took you from early career, developing your research interests and landing at Stanford, where you are now. Tell us the story.

Matt 0:56

Sure. So I have always been interested in communication. I started as a young kid being really fascinated by how people were influenced and persuaded by different things. I think I was always trying to get my parents to, to take me places or by me toys, and so I was really fascinated by it. In high school. Because my last name starts with ab, I was always asked to go first. You know, we always sat alphabetically and everything always had to happen alphabetically. So I would be the first kid on the first day of class who shared how summer was, or, or whenever we had to give a book report or something like that. I was always the one who had to go first. So I got used to just speaking without a lot of preparation, and, and from that, uh, developed a slight confidence around speaking. Although I, I was quite nervous as a speaker for part of my life I set out in university to be a doctor. Actually, and then I met calculus and chemistry and, and they suggested that that was not a good career for me. And as part of that, I discovered psychology and I fell in love with psychology. And from psychology, I learned about communication. So I, I'd always been interested in it, but I didn't really know. You could s. Study it. And so I went to graduate school in communication, became really, really interested in applied communication. How can we actually help people? Had to pay off some student loans. So I went to work in the corporate world. I, I worked for over a decade in, high tech. I ran learning and development organizations and really saw the impact of communication on people's success at work. You could be bright and have the best ideas, but if you couldn't communicate them effectively, It, it might not, lead to your success and then had an opportunity to switch back to teaching, which is my passion, and, and have been doing that ever since. So, been teaching, doing consulting, but communication has always been important to me.

Suzan 2:43

I love that story about a last name that starts with ab leading to easy public speaking because

Matt 2:49

you, well, I, easy is the right word, but frequent and then frequency led to, uh, comfort. I think

Suzan 2:55

I've heard that when people go first, you know, in a lineup of speakers, they're always gonna stand out and be more memorable. It's actually a good thing to go first if you wanna make an impression. So maybe there was some confidence boost in that as

Matt 3:07

well. I think that's true and, and in terms of anxiety reduction, and I've spent a lot of my life. Studying anxiety management around speaking and helping people. If you do something courageous, it actually can counteract some of that anxiety feeling. So if you know you have to speak later in a meeting, volunteering or asking a question earlier in the meeting can actually help you feel more confident. So there is something to going early and going first

Suzan 3:31

So you wrote a book, speaking Up Without Freaking Out. I love that title. And it is about how to become a confident and compelling presenter. Why is speaking anxiety such a big problem for people? I mean, I've read that it's one of the top five anxieties people have over like really terrible things that could happen to them.

Matt 3:50

Yeah, I, I joke that people would rather be, leaning over a precipice covered in snakes and spiders with a gun at their head rather than giving speeches. I and others who study it believe that this is part of our biology It's ingrained in who we are. It, it has a lot to do with our status, our relative status to others. And when I talk about status, I'm not talking about who drives the fanciest car, who has more likes than others on social media. I'm talking about status within a group. And as our species was evolving where you were in your group, you hung out with. Everything, it meant survival, it meant access to food reproduction, et cetera. So anything that put your status at risk was something you should be very concerned about. And getting up in front of others and doing something embarrassing or wrong or, in some way damaging could negatively impact your status. And that's why we see anxiety around speaking in front of others. Across cultures, it's, it's ubiquitous across cultures. It tends to develop around the teenage years when people become more active contributors to their group. So, a lot of us believe it's status based, and yet, even though it's part of our biology, there are things you can do to learn to mitigate it. And that's what the book is really about. It's around finding techniques that can work for us to go against our innate desire to protect our relative status to.

Suzan 5:12

I love everything that starts with evolutionary biology as sort of the backdrop for how we act as human beings because we are tribal emotional being, so we can't just make the rational decision not to be afraid of something. But I also love that you're saying while that is ingrained in us that that kind of. Trigger is not as relevant in today's world because we're not going to be eaten alive or killed, or, totally exiled from our tribe if we don't give a perfect speech. And so there are tactics that people can put in place for themselves that just makes it a little bit more bearable and, and maybe even fun at some point.

Matt 5:45

Absolutely. And in fact, we can have fun and enjoy and collect, connect, and collaborate in our communication. We just have to learn to manage our anxiety, to allow us to get to that.

Suzan 5:55

So let's talk about nonverbal presence to start, because that's part of the book. How can leaders use nonverbals and voice to appear more confident? What are some of the tips you share in the book?

Matt 6:06

And again, the goal is not to make everybody communicate the same way. That's not the goal. The goal is to find an authentic way that works for you. But there are some foundational principles that tend to work across cultures, although there are cultural idiosyncrasies. I'll give you a few. One is in terms of body posture, we want to be big, balanced and still nervous. People make themselves small. They fidget and move around a lot and. They contort their bodies and sway and lean. So if you can be big, and by big I mean take your shoulder blades, your scapula bones and pull them down. That broadens your chest. You're not puffing your chest out, but you just make yourself broader. It also tightens the neck muscles a little bit so we don't tilt our heads. A lot of people will tilt their heads, which in and of itself isn't always a bad thing, but when you're trying to command a room, having a, a head, Straight and balanced is important. And then we wanna make sure our feet position, if we're standing, our feet are parallel under our shoulders so that we don't sway. Many of us stand like a penguin or a duck, and that opens our hips. If you've ever done yoga or martial arts or anything of that nature, you know that your hips are open When your feet, uh, point out to the side. Many yoga postures do this. Martial arts stances do this to open the hips, but that means we sway more So big, balanced and still in terms of posture. In terms of voice, you want variation. Our brains habituate very quickly. If somebody talks in a monotone or mono rate, we don't pay as much attention. We habituate to it. So you want some variety, of course, not forced. You want it to be authentic, but here's where you can use adjectives and adverbs. You know, our high school English teachers taught us a lot about these, but I would never say to you, I'm really excited to be here. No, I'd say I'm really excited to be here. I would emphasize those words in a way that gets variation. So if you can be big, balanced and still vary your voice. And then the third and final thing I'll talk about is in North American culture, the culture you and I are in right now. Eye contact is really important. We need to look people in the eyes. Other cultures have different rules around eye contact. We have to be sensitive to those. And this was a big challenge when we all went virtual, right? Because the eye contact I have to make is not with your video, it's with the camera. So it looks like I'm looking at you. But in fact, when I look at your video, to you, it looks like I'm looking at your shoes. And so we, we have to make good eye contact. So posture, varied voice, good eye contact, those are fundamental to all communication, especially as leaders. Yeah.

Suzan 8:35

And I love that you're saying a lot of these can be applied across cultures and that you're aware of the cultural aspects at the same time, where some things are important to vary and to be aware of if you go outside of North America. You write about how speaker can focus in on their audience's needs and connect their content to them. How can we do

Matt 8:57

that? There's several things I can say on this. So let, let me try to be concise on it. First and foremost, as an anxiety management technique, if you put your focus not on you, but on your audience, it makes a tremendous difference. So many of us are nervous. Am I going to come off well? Am I gonna do justice to my idea? Are people going to think this is silly? That's very self focused. But if you can remind yourself you have value to add, there's a reason you are speaking in front of these other people, and if you remind yourself that there's value you bring, you turn your focus away from you into the audience. And for many of us, that puts us in a very different mode. One that is less stressed. Now, how do we actually do that connection? Well, first and foremost, you have to think about who is the audience, what's important to them. A foundational mistake we make in our communication was we start from the wrong place. We say, what do I want to say? And that's the wrong place to start. Rather, you should start from, what does my audience need to hear? It's about their needs. So you have to do a thorough audience analysis in the podcast. I host Think Fast, talk smart. The number one response to the question that I ask when I say what's the most important ingredient in communication is knowing your audience across everybody I've interviewed. So. Knowing your audience is part of how you connect. And then once you actually try to connect, there's some techniques you can use. There are three categories of techniques. One is physical connection. Get people doing something, raising their hand, watching a video, typing into the chat that gets them engaged. Another is through language. Use people's names, use questions, use analogies. All of this can bring people more engaged. And then finally, you can, help people to be engaged by reinforcing the relevance of what you're saying to them. So I'm sharing this with you so you can then do this. All of that helps with engagement, but it starts from your focus on them, not on you.

Suzan 10:53

So it's a little different than this cliche of imagine the audience in their underwear, right? because that's still about yourself, where you're trying to make yourself feel a little bit better.

Matt 11:03

The Brady's, it's really empathizing. You're too young to even remember that show, but the the Brady Bunch advice of picture, your audience in their underwear, I think that would just make me much more uncomfortable and nervous. But interestingly, there is a kernel of truth in that advice. It's not seeing people in their under. But visualization is actually a very powerful tool to desensitize ourselves. If you're an airline pilot, you do flight simulators, right? A lot of us athletes and others, we envision what we're doing before we do it. That visualization actually can reduce anxiety. So, Before you speak, not while you speak, you can actually imagine yourself in the room or on the zoom before you speak and see it going well. And that actually helps reduce your anxiety. So there was a curve.

Suzan 11:50

Yeah. Like you're almost like manifesting what's going to happen in the presentation that you're gonna get

Matt 11:56

closed when you do it. No

Suzan 11:57

nakedness. Yeah. I, I never thought that that was that compelling because it still comes from this place. I'm nervous, and comparing the audience to yourself rather than looking at yourself in service of the audience. So we've talked about a lot of emotional levers, around, the. Nonverbals voice and then also how to reduce anxiety and empathizing with the audience. And then I had the question around structure of a presentation. Sure. And is that still on the emotional level for people Or is there something rational, I

Matt 12:31

have never had anybody ask me that question. And it is a very insightful question because I think you're absolutely right. Structure is rational. It gives us a roadmap, a beginning, a middle, and an end. Our brains gravitate towards that kind of structure, random lists and bullet points. Our brain is not very good at processing that. So story, narrative, connection, logically of points really important and that's very rational. But there is an emotional c. To it. Structure is comforting. Knowing that you have an appreciation of where you're going and the ideas are connected can really help. I use the analogy of giving a communication, a presentation, running a meeting, et cetera. Writing a document is like being a tour guide. You're starting in one place and you're taking people somewhere else. The best tour guides set your expectations up front. For the primary reason of helping you relax so you can pay attention. If I showed up and said, I'm your tour guide, let's go. You might be really uncomfortable. Where are we going? Why are we going there? Do I have the right shoes on? But if I say, I'm your tour guide, here are the three things we're going to do today. Then you can be comfortable and relaxed. So I love that question because structure not only helps rationally lay out where you're going and help you as a speaker to remember what you want to say, it helps your audience feel much more comfortable. So thanks for asking that question.

13:53

executive. The podcast is sponsored by ViiV Higher Education, a full service marketing agency and enrollment strategy consulting firm for colleges and universities. ViiV is passionate about executive education and lifelong learning. Today's episode is brought to you in collaboration with the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Suzan 14:14

That makes a lot of sense because it's not like good structure just allows people to turn off their emotions, Also you in your book talk about self-defeating beliefs, and we've gotten at that a little bit and how they exacerbate anxiety. But how can you train yourself not to fall into that trap? Especially, let's say you're giving a presentation and something doesn't go as planned, or you get a really critical question or you're stumbling across your words. How do you train yourself to. Sort of Fall apart.

Matt 14:44

I'll talk about what you can do in the moment, but many of us believe that there is a right way to communicate. And this comes from many other activities that we do in our life. If you're an athlete, there are right ways to play the game and wrong ways. If you're a performer, like an actor, singer, a musician, there's a right way to do it. And we believe, and we take that notion into our communication that there's a right way. And the reality is there is no right way to communicate. There are better ways and worse ways, but there is no right way. And we put a tremendous amount of pressure on ourselves to do it. So if we can convince ourselves, and I actually have the audacity to get up in front of Stanford MBAs and the classes I teach and tell them to strive for mediocrity in their communication and their jaws drop. Here's the logic in. If I am challenging myself to be the best and do it the best, I am burning a whole bunch of mental energy that's a cognitive tax I'm putting on myself that actually makes it likely or less likely that I will actually do things well by constantly judging and evaluating what I'm saying, what I could say, how is this landing, et cetera, that's burning a lot of fuel that could be better directed. Communicating. So when we lower the bar to just get it done, if somebody asks you a question, just answer the question. If somebody asks for feedback, just give feedback. Then all of a sudden, all those cognitive resources that were being used to evaluate, judge critique can be focused on doing it. So by striving for mediocrity, you can achieve greatness. So that's the mental mind shift that we have to have. We have to have that new mindset. Now, in the moment, if something goes wrong, If we come from that place that, that there is no right, then that doesn't feel as bad, and two, you have to realize that your audience. Isn't judging you at the same level and degree that we judge ourselves. There's this well known, effect in psychology called the spotlight effect. That is, we feel people are paying much more attention to us than they really are. Knowing that can also help. And then the final thing I'll say is if something goes wrong, distract your audience. I'll forget sometimes what I'm supposed to say. I give the same lectures over and over again. I, did I say it here? Did I not say it? You know, in that moment, Ask your audience a question, get them looking or focusing on something else to allow yourself to collect your thoughts. So I might stop in the middle of a lecture and say, Hey, I just wanna pause for a moment and have you think about how what we've just discussed can be applied. And I think most of us could do something like that, that distracts the audience long enough. They're thinking you get your your place back and you can move forward. So long winded answer to your question, it's a mindset shift about trying to do it right and in the moment, giving yourself permission to distract your audience. So you can get yourself back on

Suzan 17:33

track. Yeah. And sometimes maybe all you need is 3D breaths. And so if you have a contingency plan for something that you could say to your audience that distracts them, whether it's taking questions imprompt you or say, turn to your neighbor and talk about this idea, or, think about this for a second and how you could apply it, jot down some notes. All of those could be part of your toolkit for moments where things do go wrong. You also write. Creating an anxiety management plan for public speaking, and would something like that be part of such a plan?

Matt 18:07

Yes. I believe everybody needs to define for themselves an anxiety management plan. This is a series of techniques that you've thought through that will help you. In advance of and during your communication when you get nervous, there are two types or two components of an anxiety management plan. Symptomatic relief and source relief Symptoms are the things that we physiologically experience. Sources are the things that initiate and exacerbate anxiety. In the book I wrote, I identify 50 of these techniques. I don't expect all 50 to work for people. In fact, I'm really thrilled if three to five will work for people, and that's what creates your anxiety management. Part of what we talked about, actually everything we've talked about, anxiety could be part of that plan. I'll share my plan just to give your listeners an idea of what these sound like. So I still get nervous in certain circumstances, and there are three things I do to help myself be less nervous. First, I remind myself as we've talked about, that I'm in service of my audience. I have value to bring. So I've put my focus on them, not on me. So that's a mindset thing I do right before I. When I get nervous, I blush and I perspire. You know, I sweat a lot when I get nervous to actually reduce the, the increase in body temperature that comes when you get nervous. I hold something cold in the palms of my hand, a cold bottle of water before I speak. Wow. The palms are thermo regulators for your body, you know, on a cold morning if you've ever held warm tea or coffee and it warms you up. I'm just doing it in reverse. And then the final thing I'll do is. I can get into the future, I can be worried about am I gonna do this right? Am I gonna hit the time limit I have, will I cover everything I need? That's all future thinking. So I need to get myself in the present moment. So what I'll do, and this sounds silly, I'll say tongue twisters out loud. And by saying a tongue twister, you can't say a tongue twister, right? And not be in the present moment. So it gets me present oriented and it warms up my voice. So before I speak in any situation, I'll have a cold bottle of water in my hand. I will remind myself I'm in service of my audience, and I will say a tongue twister or two. And that's my anxiety management plan. Others have very different techniques, but my students and the people I coach, use these plans for long, long periods of.

Suzan 20:18

That is awesome. And so concrete, three things that you do. You have 50 in the book, people can try out and see what works for them. That's genius. Know you're teaching MBA students and then you also consult, so is there anybody who stands out that you could kind of share a story about? Was really intimidated about public speaking and has since come a long way. Would love to hear. A success story story,

Matt 20:43

So I, there are several, I I do not share names of people I've worked with, but I'll give you some descriptions so you get an idea. There are several leaders of companies that everybody listening in has heard of who are nervous. Nervous, either because they're human and like all of us, they get nervous or because they feel the weight of import of what they. And so working with them, we've been through creating anxiety management plans. We've been able to do that. Academics, can be very anxious around speaking and helping them with specific techniques. Many Ted speakers, many folks who speak at Davos or South by Southwest, these are folks who get nervous and they've learned over. One of the big disservices I think that social media and things like Ted have done, and I love TED Talks, but we see really good speakers speaking really well. What we don't see is the preparation, the practice, the anxiety management that went through in all of these, so, Begin comparing ourselves to this ideal that if you looked behind the scenes would realize isn't true. So I'm not saying that these are fake or phony. I'm simply saying that many, many, many people, many people that we think are amazing communicators get nervous. and they have worked really hard to manage that anxiety. And what we see is the result of that work, we don't see the actual work itself.

Suzan 22:02

What advice would you give current or emerging leaders who are hoping to really elevate their voice right, in their organization, in society?

Matt 22:13

Let me start very generically, and then I'll get very specific if that's alright. The only way we get better at communication is, through three things, repetition, reflection, and feedback. So if you're an emerging leader and you wanna improve your communication, you gotta get the reps in, you gotta practice. So does that mean creating situations for yourself internal to your company where you're presenting more? Sure. Does that mean, speaking at conferences or meetups? Absolutely. Could it be joining Toastmasters, an international organization, and going and presenting there? Sure thing. Taking classes, getting coaching, all of that. But it's not just the repetition. You have to do reflection you have to think about. And at the end of a presentation, at the end of a meeting, spend a few minutes thinking about what worked, what didn't work. Many of us do. Our communication, like that definition of insanity, repeating the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. So you have to reflect and you have to make changes. And then finally you need feedback. Trusted others who can say, Hey, that was great when you did this or not so good when you did that. And that's how we get better. So generically, if anybody wants to improve, especially emerging leaders, repetition, reflection, and feedback. How best do you do that? Well, for many people, speaking from a place of expertise can help. So where are you strong? Go find opportunities where you have some strength based on your experience, based on your passions, based on what you've learned. Do those in small groups, do those in large groups. Get yourself out there. As I mentioned, I think Toastmasters is an amazing. I actually recommend improvisation for lots of people. There are improv classes. People think of improvisation as acting in comedy and having to be funny all the time. It's not. It's a way of learning to communicate and live actually more spontaneously. And if you think about it, most of our communication is spontaneous. You know, we don't have that PowerPoint for our life every morning when we wake up and we have to. Adjust and adapt. So learning, improvisation, working with Toastmasters, setting up situations where you can present absolutely the best way to develop the skills.

Suzan 24:17

What about meetings? Because all of us go to so many meetings and in some ways that's public speaking, right? When we talk in front of 12 people, six people, and we present our ideas, we react to other people's ideas. Do you have any tips for how to be more effective at speaking in meetings?

Matt 24:33

Yeah, so I love the idea of just speaking up in meetings is a great way to practice. So a couple things. When you go to a meeting, assuming you're just a participant, not the person running it, I have different ideas for that. You should come in with thinking about what are your ideas or themes that you want to get across. So when you see the agenda, you know the topic, think about what's important to me, where can I add value to this? And think about that in advance. And then when it is your turn to. First, try to connect what you're saying to what has either recently been said or to the mission or agenda of the meeting. We wanna connect our ideas to others that helps people process them, and then structure your content. We talked earlier about structure. Structure is so important. There's a very simple structure I love and I think it's incredibly valuable for so many things like a meeting contribution. It's three questions. So what, and now what? What is the information you're saying? It's your idea, your product, your position, your belief. So what is, why is it important? And then now what is, what comes next? So if I have a contribution to make in the meeting, let's say we're talking about the implementation plan of some product, I might say, we really have to think about the timing of this. Timing is important because we know that vacations are coming up in Europe and we have some other issues in other locations, so we don't wanna miss the boat. So that's a what and a so what? So the now what would be, I think we should all set up another meeting to look at the calendars to sync. The implementation. So that's what, so what and now what? Nicely Packaging up my contribution so that when I make it, it's easy for others to digest. They understand the relevance and it fits nicely into what has been said before. So meetings are great crucibles to, to test your communication, to practice your communication, and to add value.

Suzan 26:16

Meetings may be also a good. test bed for your ideas that you could then flesh out for bigger presentations.

Matt 26:24

I think that's exactly right, that there are opportunities for you to use meetings as, as a, a focus group test bed, like you said.

Suzan 26:31

What ideas are people reacting to that you're bringing to the table. And getting a sense of which ones might be worthwhile to build out. But also, I'm wondering if you have other tips on how to get really good content for when you present. Is it just read a lot, listen to a lot of podcasts, watch a lot of TED talks, do a lot of research.

Matt 26:50

Sure. So, you know, they say if you wanna be a good writer, read a lot. If you wanna be a good speaker, watch others speak and give yourself opportunities to speak. Think about what moves you. It's, it's really important as people develop their communication skills to, to find where are your strengths? What do you gravitate towards? What do you like in other people? I'm a huge fan of alliteration. I like when words start with the same, consonant. and I learned that by watching other people speak and say, wow, I'm really drawn in when they do that. Finding what works for you is great. I'm a professor, so I think taking classes, having a coach, listening to podcasts, reading books, watching videos, lots of ways to learn and hone your skill, but do it deliberately. People treat learning communication as if it's very different from learning other things. Anybody who's taken up a new sport, anybody who's learned a musical instrument, how did you learn it and how'd you get better at it? All of that process, all of that intention and mindset. Same thing for communication. It's not different. The only challenge is we've all been communicating roughly since we were one year of age. You know, I've never played pickleball before, so when I wanna learn pickleball, I have to actually be. Purposeful in that communication. We feel like, well, I've been doing it for a long time. It's not as difficult, or I shouldn't invest as much effort so that that's the bigger

Suzan 28:05

challenge. Yeah. I also imagine that people who are told to solicit feedback about their speaking style or speaking tactics would feel very vulnerable to their feedback because it can be difficult. Separate ourselves, our egos and our identity from the feedback about how we communicate. And so maybe making a rational decision that how I communicate doesn't necessarily always reflect who I am, and there might be ways that I can better align how I communicate with who I want to be and what my values are. That could potentially be a game changer to be more open to feedback and seek it out and practice more so it doesn't feel so, crushing when we feel like we weren't at our very best.

Matt 28:49

You said it very well. I agree 100% with what you said. We have to first solicit feedback and then divorce that feedback. From who we are as people, and that's the only way you get better in any situation where feedback's

Suzan 29:03

involved. In fact, maybe reflecting on what it says about us, that we're willing to hear feedback. I mean, that's great, right? That's aligned with our values and it allows us to be courageous to, to frame it that way. So you're at Stanford teaching MBA students, teaching executives and consulting. I'd love to hear your thoughts on what makes the executive learning environment at Stanford unique and why you think somebody who would come there to learn, about all kinds of topics, including public speaking, would find, a lot of value.

Matt 29:33

Stanford is a beautiful place. It is a place full of ideas. It is in the heart of innovation in Silicon Valley. It created or helped create Silicon Valley, so it's an amazing place. I was an undergraduate at Stanford. I have taught there for decades. I very much believe in the power of the place, but also the power of ideas and the diversity of ideas that, that. And the diversity of learning experiences. At the business school where I teach, we have lots of different opportunities, not just for our students who apply and enroll, but for others who are very far away. There's a whole online program we call our lead program there, executive education, open programs where people come to campus. And it's wonderful. I, I have students all over the world. It's, these classes are mostly in my evenings in the Pacific time zone, and I've had. In Asia, I've had students in Europe, who are getting up or staying up late at ungodly hours to take these classes, which is a real testament to their desire to learn these things. But yes, anybody can sign up for continuing studies classes. the lead program through, the Stanford Business School has a, has an application process, but it's designed for people who are remote as well. So there are lots of opportunities,

Suzan 30:42

I mean that's the passion out of which this podcast was born is that a lot of people don't realize what's there for them in higher education after they get their undergrad and graduate degrees, and that there are courses that you can take off the shelf to help yourself get better at something that you wanna get better

Matt 30:58

at. May I add one thing? Community colleges are an untapped resource A lot of us have a very stereotypical view of who goes to community colleges, kids straight out of high school. That's not true. There are a wealth of knowledge from people who are really experts in their field and really, Teaching. So check out community colleges as well. I can't say enough about, yeah,

Suzan 31:18

thank you for that. There are a lot of community colleges that also engage with companies that are around them, engage with, professionals, not just, like you were saying, traditional aged students and they're such local. Feeders of energy and growth, It's been an absolute pleasure to have you I will end with the question that I ask everyone, which is, in a nutshell, what does leadership mean to you?

Matt 31:42

To me, leadership is simply the abstraction of our communication. If you look at what does a leader do, a leader communicates and they communicate appropriately to different audiences. Communication is enacted. Leadership is typically how I define it. So if you wanna be a better leader, you need to improve your communi. Skills. Fundamentally, that's how I focus on communication. That's how I teach about communication, and that's why I think it's so important in business that is really

Suzan 32:09

thought-provoking. And, and I, I think an idea that is unique among the other answers we've gotten. So I really appreciate it. And again, thank you so much for being on the

Matt 32:19

show. It was a great experience and thank you for bringing the information you do to the world.

32:26

Thank you for listening to Exec You, the podcast sponsored by ViiV Higher Education. We hope you learn something that will help you grow as a leader. Please don't forget to share this episode with your network and subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss future episodes.