Episodes

Want to change someone’s mind? First, explains Robert Cialdini, you have to change their framing.

For Cialdini, the Regent's Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University, persuasion begins before we even deliver our pitch or presentation. Through what he calls “pre-suasion,” communicators can prime audiences to receive messages in a specific way, simply by drawing their attention in specific directions. 

“It involves focusing people on—putting them in mind of—those motivators before they encounter [them] in the communicator’s message,” Cialdini says, “bringing people’s focus of attention onto something that is nested in the message…before that message is delivered, so they have been readied for the concept.”

In this episode, Matt Abrahams and Cialdini talk about the motivating power of FOMO, getting better advice from others, and how your next wine purchase could be influenced by what music is playing in the shop.

Think Fast, Talk Smart is a podcast produced by Stanford Graduate School of Business. Each episode provides concrete, easy-to-implement tools and techniques to help you hone and enhance your communication skills.

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Do love and money mix? Labor economist and Stanford Graduate School of Business professor emerita Myra Strober says absolutely. 

“Separating money and love is not a good idea. I have had 40 years to think about this, and, in my class at the GSB on work and family, each semester I realize how important it is to intertwine love and money."

In this podcast episode, Matt Abrahams sits down with Strober and social innovation leader Abby Davisson to discuss the thorny topics of work, money, career, and love. In their new book, Money and Love: An Intelligent Roadmap for Life’s Biggest Decisions, the coauthors provide a framework for communicating in and around tough decisions with those we love. These may include caring for aging relatives, expanding your family, changing careers or moving.

“If you are in a relationship, maybe you have kids or other people living in your household, the first thing you need to realize is that your career decisions are going to affect the whole ecosystem,” Davisson says. “It’s very important not just to clarify what you want, but to anticipate and think about the impact on those around you.”

Think Fast, Talk Smart is a podcast produced by Stanford Graduate School of Business. Each episode provides concrete, easy-to-implement tools and techniques to help you hone and enhance your communication skills.

More resources:

Myra Strober: Breaking Barriers at Stanford GSB

 Achieving Balance In Work and Life, video with Myra Strober

Myra Strober: How the Workplace Works — or Doesn't — for Families

An Economist’s Take on Why Parental Leave Matters

How Companies Can Solve the Pay Equity Problem

Money and Love: An Intelligent Roadmap for Life's Biggest Decisions, HarperCollins

Strober and Davisson on Forbes

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In one of our most popular episodes, professor of Marketing Baba Shiv shares his research on how emotions affect decision making. Knowing this, and applying techniques to help guide our audience through information and emotion, can help us make our messages stick. In this best-of episode we've included extra footage from Matt Abrahams's conversation with Shiv from November of 2020 that touches on how to best approach writing emails.

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As a communication expert, Alison Wood Brooks spends a lot of time talking about talking. But, as she says, listening is just as important.

“My course is called TALK,” says Wood Brooks, who is the O'Brien Associate Professor of Business Administration and Hellman Faculty Fellow at Harvard Business School. “The great irony is that it should really be called LISTEN. It’s hard to be a good listener yet so very important.”

In the latest episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, Wood Brooks covers conversation strategies for active listening, turning anxiety into excitement, and knowing when it’s time to change the subject.

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When it comes to negotiating and managing conflict, Professor Michele Gelfand says it’s time to get creative.

Everybody has wants and needs. So what do we do when our priorities compete with those of other people? According to Gelfand, a professor of organizational behavior, negotiations and conflict management are exercises in creative problem-solving, ones where we look for ways to not only get what we want, but for those on the other side of the table to get what they want too. “The best negotiators tend to be the most creative,” says Gelfand.

In this episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, Gelfand joins Matt Abrahams to discuss how creative communication can help us find solutions where everybody wins.

Read part one of our interview with Gelfand here. 

More resources:

How Culture Affects Communication Styles

Threatening Language

Why The Pandemic Slammed Loose Countries

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As Professor Jesper Sørensen sees it, a winning strategy is the result of conversations, not commands.

Sørensen says strategy can be directed from the C-suite, but it doesn’t have to be. “Lots of great strategies are discovered,” he says, “they're discovered because the leaders were able to listen to their frontline workers or their frontline managers.” A more iterative approach, says Sørensen, helps companies adapt their strategy to an ever-changing landscape.

In the latest episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, Sørensen joins host and lecturer Matt Abrahams to discuss how organizations can use better communication to craft better strategies.

Additional resources:

Making Great Strategy: Arguing for Organizational Advantage, by Jesper B. Sørensen Glenn R. Carroll

Class Takeaways: Crafting and Leading Strategy: Five lessons in five minutes — Professor Jesper Sørenson teaches how to create and implement a successful business strategy.

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What’s the secret to coming up with good ideas? For Jeremy Utley, it’s about generating as many as possible. 

The director of executive education at the Stanford d.school, Utley says, “very few problems we face in business or in life have a single right answer.” All ideas — the good, the bad, and the ugly — are “a necessary input to an innovation process,” and an essential step in getting to solutions that will actually work.

In this episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, Utley and host Matt Abrahams explore how we can focus less on finding the “right” answer and open ourselves up to more innovative ideas.

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Stress, anxiety, nervousness — when these feelings inevitably arise, lecturer Kelly McGonigal says it’s not about making them go away, but using them to your advantage.

“What I have come to value about anxiety,” says McGonigal, “is it’s a sign that I care.” As she explains, feelings of stress alert us to things that matter to us and help us stay present in the moment — particularly useful, she says, when it comes to communication.

In this episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, McGonigal and host Matt Abrahams discuss how to channel stress toward more effective communication and to a deeper connection to our own purpose and meaning.

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