Think Fast Talk Smart: Communication Techniques
One of the most essential ingredients to success in business and life is effective communication. Join Matt Abrahams, best-selling author and Strategic Communication lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Business, as he interviews experts to provide actionable insights that help you communicate with clarity, confidence, and impact. From handling impromptu questions to crafting compelling messages, Matt explores practical strategies for real-world communication challenges. Whether you’re navigating a high-stakes presentation, perfecting your email tone, or speaking off the cuff, Think Fast, Talk Smart equips you with the tools, techniques, and best practices to express yourself effectively in any situation. Enhance yo...
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256. Be Kind: The Most Overlooked Driver of Success
<p>Why being kind is the best investment.</p><p><br></p><p>Can kindness be a company’s competitive advantage? Bonnie Hayden Cheng says yes — and she’s got a business metric to prove it: return on kindness.</p><p>Cheng is a professor of management at City University of Hong Kong who researches how workplace behaviors affect interpersonal dynamics and well-being. In her book, The Return on Kindness, she explores how organizations that foster a culture of kindness see a measurable ROK — one marked by a more committed, more productive, and less expensive workforce. “Organizations that have this kind of cu...
255. How Leaders Sound Smart Without Saying Too Much
<p>The keys to communicating clarity, not confusion.</p><p>What separates communicators who clarify from those who confuse? The ability to “Simplify complexity,” says Adam Bryant. “I don't think you can be an effective leader if you can't do that.”</p><p>Bryant is a senior managing director at the ExCo Group and former New York Times journalist who interviewed over 500 CEOs for his renowned Corner Office column. Through those conversations, he identified a pattern: the best communicators turn complexity into clarity. For Bryant, that means checking your own expertise, considering not whether something makes sense to you, but whether...
254. Start Fresh: How Framing, Timing, and Talk Can Improve Your Finances
<p>How to have more open conversations about money.</p><p><br></p><p>Talking about money is taboo for many people. But according to Wendy De La Rosa, financial well-being only starts when we break the silence around finance.</p><p>De La Rosa is a professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and a co-founder of the Common Cents Lab, an initiative aiming to increase financial well-being for low- to moderate-income people. For many, she says, shame keeps us silent about money. “Shame is paralyzing, and more than any other negative emotion, [it] leads us to i...
253. Top 10: The Best Communication Tips from 2025
<p>Our 10 favorite communication insights from 2025.</p><p>The most transformative communication insights are the ones we actually remember to use. That’s why host Matt Abrahams is taking stock of his favorite communication tips from this year, so we can carry them into the next.</p><p>In this annual Think Fast, Talk Smart tradition, Abrahams shares his top 10 communication insights from guests over the past year, from facilitating connection through Gina Bianchini's "proactive serendipity” to Jenn Wynn’s use of dialogue as a gateway to synergy. Whether you're looking to build trust, boost productivity, or speak more spontaneously, this y...
252. Rethinks: How to Make Complex Ideas Accessible
<p>Presenting complex information for your audience to understand.</p><p>As communicators, we often need to take complex information (e.g., financial, technical, or scientific) and make it more understandable for our audience – we’re experts and they likely aren’t. But having so much knowledge on the topics we discuss can often make the job more difficult: we dive in too quickly, forget about our audience's needs, or use jargon that goes over their heads. </p><p><br></p><p>In this episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, strategic communications lecturers Matt Abrahams and Lauren Weinstein explore the “curse of...
251. How to Stop Performing and Start Communicating with Presence
<p>Why good communication requires presence, not performance.</p><p><br></p><p>Effective communication isn't about perfecting your performance. According to Dr. Kate Mason, it's about being powerfully present.</p><p>Mason is a world champion debater, executive communication coach, and author of the book Powerfully Likeable. In her work coaching senior executives to communicate more effectively, she emphasizes that it’s not about creating a performative persona, it’s about uncovering the authentic communicator you already are. “The coaching is just bringing the real parts of you to the fore,” she says, “uncovering rather than totally building from scratch. A...
250. How to Navigate Conflict: Tools For Productive Communication
<p>Celebrate our 250th episode with expert strategies that make tough conversations easier — and more meaningful.</p><p>Some of the most meaningful shifts in how we communicate come from the moments that challenge us the most. In this special 250th episode of Think Fast Talk Smart, Matt Abrahams reflects on the insights that have shown him how conflict can become a catalyst for clarity, connection, and even compassion. </p><p>From Amy Gallo’s reminder that the “right kind of conflict” leads to better outcomes to Jenn Wynn’s framework for calming our nervous system before stepping into a hard conve...
249. Quick Thinks: Rituals That Make Teamwork Work
<p>The right rituals—and the right conversations—can transform how your team collaborates.</p><p><br></p><p>Strong collaboration starts with thoughtful practices and clear communication. As Molly Sands, Head of the Teamwork Lab at Atlassian, emphasizes, the teams that thrive are the ones that regularly pause to align on what matters and how they’re progressing. “You want to know if you’re making progress,” she notes, “and you want ways to redirect early—before you’re scrambling at the end.”</p><p>Through her research with teams across Atlassian and around the world, Sands has seen how small, consisten...
248. Better Together: How to Supercharge Your Team’s Productivity
<p>The secret to effective teamwork and collaboration.</p><p><br></p><p>To collaborate, we have to communicate. As Molly Sands knows, “The more that we can get on the same page, the more effective we are.”</p><p>Sands is a behavioral scientist and the head of the Teamwork Lab at Atlassian, where she researches how teams can collaborate more effectively and efficiently, especially in distributed and hybrid work environments. As she’s seen in her research and within her own team, “People can accomplish a lot more together when they work well together.” The key to unlocking that poten...
247. “Matt”er of Fact: Coaching on Feedback and Q&A
<p>Two new Think Fast Talk Smart AI tools put communication skills to the test in real time.</p><p><br>Technology promises many things, but few experiments illustrate its potential more vividly than a coach in conversation with his own digital counterpart. In this episode, Matt Abrahams introduces two new AI-powered tools from the Think Fast Talk Smart Online Learning Community: Coach Matt and Chat Matt. Trained on years of Matt’s communication teachings and podcast insights, these digital counterparts offer a rare opportunity to watch human expertise meet machine-driven guidance in real time.</p><p>Coach Matt begins by...
