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Matt Abrahams
This episode is brought to you by Stanford University. As a Think Fast Talk Smart listener, you're familiar with the techniques and tactics developed by my Stanford colleagues that can help you be a better strategic communicator. Like the work of Jamil Zaki on how to be more trusted and connected, Stanford professors help shape the world in many other ways. Recently, my colleagues in the Stanford School of Engineering hosted a course for the U.S. air Force Test Pilot School. Over 10 days, Stanford professors taught the pilots some of the latest AI and robotics technologies that they could apply to their careers designing, testing and evaluating military aircraft and satellites. Partnerships like this one with the Air Force are part of everyday research activities at Stanford. If you'd like to stay informed on world changing research like this, sign up for Stanford Report at Connect Stanford. Eduardo what is better than getting advice and guidance on how to hone and develop your communication skills from one amazing knowledgeable guest? Getting that advice and guidance from four amazing guests. My name is Matt Abrahams and I teach Strategic Communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to Think Fast Talk Smart, the podcast. This is part one of two episodes that were recorded live on the Stanford campus in front of almost 800 at this year's Stanford Executive Education's Lead Me to We conference. In this episode, you will learn from four GSB faculty members, Naomi Bagdonis, Christian Wheeler, Nir Halevi and Allison Kluger. Each of them has been on the show before. Unlike this episode where I ask all the questions, our second Me to We episode will have our panelists answering live questions from our audience. So let's get started and let's get learning. Before we get started, I wanted to invite you to join us for our upcoming Thinkfast Talk Smart Live event. On April 14th and 15th. I'll be giving a brief talk and then I'll take questions live. If you want to appear on video with me, consider joining premium register at Fastersmarter IO Live. That's Fastersmarter IO Live. I look forward to celebrating with you at one or both of these events.
Eduardo
Without further ado, welcome to our live version of Think Fast, Talk Smart. We have four esteemed panelists here, Alison, Christian, Nir, and Naomi. Let's give them a big round of applause. All right, well, we're going to get started. I have three questions that I'll be asking each of our guests and then we'll open it up for some of you to ask your questions. There are mics that will be run around, so when it's your turn, just speak into the mic. Thank you Very much so. To begin, I thought I would start with Alison Kluger. Alison is over there.
Matt Abrahams
For those of you who don't know.
Eduardo
Alison, she is the MBA Class of 1978 Lecturer in Organizational Behavior. Like me, Alison teaches strategic communication. She also teaches classes on pivoting and reputation management. And, Alison, I owe you a big congratulations. You just released a book that I know you wrote several chapters in called Brand up the Ultimate Playbook for College and Career Success in the Digital World. So congratulations on that.
Nir Halevi
Thank you.
Matt Abrahams
So give us a little sneak peek.
Eduardo
Into the pages of the book. What is one new idea or concept that you're teaching in your reputation management class that might have appeared in the book that we can all benefit from?
Alison Kluger
What I always say, and what I think is really important with reputation in branding is that how you perceive yourself has to match how you land on others. So you might think you're doing great, and others might think not so great. So let's say I am direct and efficient, and someone thinks I'm arrogant and rude. So what's the answer to that? You have to be more aware of your audience. But the good news is you can control your reputation, and you can change your reputation by figuring out what might not be landing well on others and then tweak it and show up consistently. That way, I believe that reputation is your currency. It can open doors for you. And I also think that there's some really strong takeaways. One, as I said, and Matt, this is preaching to you, which is know your audience, know what they need to hear and what they want to hear. Also listen more than you talk and check in. No one wants to hear a monologue. Check in and say, does that make sense to you? Can I clarify? And finally, I say, exceed expectations. And that way, your reputation is great. But also the reputation of the person who might have recommended you is also safe.
Eduardo
Thank you. When the podcast first started, I was very nervous about doing it, and it was an experiment, and I wanted to make sure that the first episodes went really well. So I made sure to invite people I knew, people who could help support me. And Alison was one of our very first interviewees.
Matt Abrahams
And one of the things that stuck.
Eduardo
With me from that episode was reputation is the echo that precedes you into the room. And I love that idea of the echo that precedes you. So thank you for sharing your answer, but also for leaving that image in my mind that helps me think about the reputation I'm trying to build and support. Well, let's move to Nir Now Nir Halevi Nir is the Jagdeep and Roshni Singh professor of Organizational Behavior. Nir studies negotiation, conflict management and social influence. Nir and I have known each other for a while and in fact Nir, you have begun to work with Stanford's athletic department and have done a lot of work with our athletes. And I'm wondering if you can share with us some of the advice that you're giving the athletes that might apply to everybody in this room as well.
Nir Halevi
Thank you. I love sports, my family loves Stanford athletics. And one thing I've learned is that our teams are great in creating a culture of pluralism. What do I mean by pluralism? I mean an environment where multiple people can thrive, ascend and lead through different skills by enacting different characteristics and showing up in different ways. So I'm currently trying to work with Stanford athletics a little bit with the coaches and with athletes on maintaining, nurturing, developing that environment. I'll give you one concrete example. I don't know how many people know this in the room, but a lot of our teams have multiple captains. One of the captain may be the most fierce and dominant and kind of be in charge of disciplining young team members. Another captain may be someone who's more approachable and light hearted and they give supportive advice. And a third captain may be the best liaison between the coaching staff and the athletes. And our coaches achieve by having multiple captains who act as different role models. They create this pluralism, this culture that accepts contributions of different kinds. I'm hoping in the coming months to work more with Stanford athletics on nurturing, developing further this culture of pluralism so that different athletes, student athletes on our teams can contribute in different ways and feel that their contributions are meaningful.
Eduardo
Thank you for that. And perhaps something we can all take away is this notion of leveraging different leaders within our organizations for different opportunities that they might bring. And that's, that's an exciting idea to think about. So next is Christian Wheeler. Christian is the Stratacom professor of Management and professor of marketing. He studies things including evaluation, influence and management best practices. And Kristen, you co teach a class on spontaneous management. I just love that idea of spontaneous management where you blend ideas from your area of study, but also with improvisation. What are one or two ideas that these leaders in the room can take home to help them manage themselves and their teams in this ever changing environment?
Christian Wheeler
Yeah, well, I would say one foundational component of the class is learning how to be comfortable being uncomfortable. I feel miserable right now and it's completely fine. When we try to avoid mental discomfort, it has a lot of negative effects on our growth. One thing it does is it makes us avoid seeking growth opportunities right when we have an outdo fear of failure. For example, you never would have started your podcast had you had this fear of failure. And I think our life trajectory is one of a changing relationship to failure. If you have kids or remember when you were a kid, kids fail all the time and it's not a problem for them. They don't care. They try to walk, they fall on their face, they get back up and try to walk again. But many of us as adults, we avoid situations where we're going to fail. We forget the failure experiences are something that happens on the way to achievement. In other words, we learn to look good by first looking bad. Just think to yourself, what did you fail at in the last week and what did you learn from it? And if you didn't fail at anything in the last week, maybe you're not putting yourself in the right situations. But another form of mental discomfort I think is just a fear of what you might call emptiness. Meaning we are so attached to our phones because a moment of unoccupied mental time feels very painful to us. There's an interesting paper by Tim Wilson where he would bring participants into the lab and ask them to sit alone without any objects, no TVs, no phones for between five and 15 minutes. And people hated it. They chose to receive electrical shocks rather than be left alone with their thoughts. But this addiction to our phone takes us out of the moment. It takes us, our attention, away from noticing things that may be what improvisers call offers stimulants to ideas. It takes us away from our interactions with our partners. It removes us from the moment. It also makes us less intelligent. Another research study showed that simply having your telephone out on the table, even if it's turned off, makes you perform worse on intelligence related tasks. Your phone is making you stupid and it's taking you away from your important relationships. It's making you avoid attending to non verbal signals and it's removing your ability to capitalize on what might make a breakthrough idea. It all starts with just being willing to endure a little discomfort. I think all of the skills in the class build on that foundational aspect.
Eduardo
So it's all about giving yourself the opportunity to fail and approaching that failure as something that's beneficial and then also being present.
Christian Wheeler
Yes, and then also not adding to that. What I mean is, many of us, when we make mistakes we mentally pile on in that moment. For example, maybe I just said something dumb, that's fine. But if now I'm playing in my head, God, why did I say that? Why was I thinking that? That's so stupid. That's taking me away from our interaction right now and it's making me perform worse in the moment. And so it can have short term effects and also longer term effects.
Eduardo
Absolutely. And what you're highlighting, Christian, is something that I often talk about, the difference between rumination and reflection. So rumination is that moment where, oh, my goodness, I said this wrong. I can't believe it. But reflection after the fact can be beneficial because it might prevent you from making that same mistake. When Christian was on the podcast, he said something that really resonated with me. Many of you know, helping people manage anxiety around speaking is something I spend a lot of time on. And I recall vividly when you talked about reminding yourself that the anxiety you're feeling is just that, it's of healing. So if you can distance yourself and say, this is me feeling anxious, that little space gives you the opportunity to do something about it instead of just being embodied by it. So I really appreciate that. It's a very useful technique. So Naomi would love to talk about some of your expertise. Naomi is a lecturer in management, where she teaches a course on humor in business along with Jennifer Aker and a course called A New Type of Leader. In your course, you ask students to identify their guiding principles. Can you share what these principles might look like and how we can find ours? And please, please, please talk about your serendipity fund. I love that idea.
Naomi Bagdonis
Sure. So the idea is that there are these principles for each of us in our lives, and they're going to be different for myself versus for near versus for Matt. And these are the principles that when we live in alignment with these principles, things fall into place more fluidly in our lives and things resonate more deeply. And so, as Matt mentioned, what we do with our leaders is we have everyone design. What are your guiding principles from your life? And this often requires looking back into moments from your leadership or from your life more broadly. What are the moments when you felt out of alignment where you felt drained? Maybe on Sunday nights you felt depleted and you just weren't feeling great about. About what you were doing with your energy. And then what are those moments in your lives where you felt really in alignment and energized? And so one of my guiding principles is around designing for serendipity. I know about myself that I'M most effective when I have what I call my 15% Serendipity Fund, where 15% of my time and my own personal budget is allocated to pursuing things that come into my field that I want to create space for. Now, this means, of course, that sometimes I'm about 115% allocated, and other times I'm only 85% allocated. But on the whole, this is one of my guiding principles that helps me live in alignment. So I would encourage everyone in this room to think about what are a couple of guiding principles that would be helpful for you all.
Eduardo
Give us an example of that.
Naomi Bagdonis
I was at a symposium and I had a conversation with someone and there was just real alignment in our missions and the type of work we wanted to do. And he said, gosh, I wish you could come to this board retreat we have. It's next week in New York. You're not going to be in New York next week, are you? And I said, well, as a matter of fact, I am going to be in New York next week. And I went on my phone that night, I booked myself a trip to New York. And that was part of my serendipity fund. And now this is a person, by the way, he asked me to be on the advisory board for something else he does. And we're looking for ways to collaborate. So it's really navigating life with a palms up attitude to say, okay, what is coming at me that I might want to take advantage of in addition to the things that I already have on my plate?
Eduardo
So it's making yourself available.
Naomi Bagdonis
Yeah, absolutely.
Matt Abrahams
And open to it.
Eduardo
And I think that's wonderful. And I'm trying to budget a little bit of serendipity time as well, so thank you.
Matt Abrahams
So I'd like to move to our.
Eduardo
Second question, and this question is for all of you. AI, do I need to say more? I'm curious to know how you are leveraging AI in the work that you do, how you might be bringing it into your classes. Christian, why don't we start with you and then we'll come to Naomi?
Christian Wheeler
Yeah, well, from a teaching perspective, I guess AI is a negative effect in that it helps students avoid doing work. But, you know, one of the things I'm interested in exploring is this notion of AI as a collaborator. So one of the things we teach in the class is working as a team, and you can think of AI as a collaborator. And I think what we may see is a reduction in the number of specialists and an increase in the number of generalists. And these generalists are going to be people who learn how to collaborate effectively with artificial intelligence. But where I found it to be most useful is actually in my research. So it can be useful, for example, in getting ideas for stimulus material. So I do some work on political topics. And so if you want to know what some typical arguments, for example, the Republicans or Democrats use for certain issues, it can be useful for that. It allows you to do things with data that you couldn't do otherwise. So, for example, sometimes I'm dealing with very large data sets, like over a million tweets, and I want to categorize those tweets along some dimension. I don't have the resources either in time or money to pay people to code a million tweets. But what you can do is you can train AI to use the criteria that you would have human coders do. And if you do it with enough specificity, you can have actually quite a level of agreement between AI and your human coders.
Eduardo
So it sounds like in your research it's helpful in many ways. Naomi, how are you using AI in your personal life and the teaching that you do?
Naomi Bagdonis
Yeah, so in the work that I'm doing with executives in particular, we're thinking a lot about human expansion over human extraction. So how do we move towards using AI to enable humans to operate in ways that are more meaningful? So if you think about how you spend your time, how I spend my time, I want to say that maybe 80% of the time that I spend could be more meaningful, and that about 20% is really focused on things that I love and elevating me. So the question becomes, how do I leverage AI to make my own time, to make the time of my teams and the executives I work with more meaningful? So an example of this for myself and my teaching is I found myself answering a lot of the same questions over and over again and coaching my students in a lot of the same ways. And so my teaching partners and I created AI assistance for our students for specific assignments. So we have one assignment, for example, where students have to write a signature story from their lives, a meaningful story, and infuse levity into that story. Well, we took all of our feedback that we've ever given students over the last nine years, and we trained this AI to coach our students based on the ways that we usually coach our students. By the way, we also did this with our body of work, with our book, and with our courses from previous years. And so now the first line of defense is for our students to interact with this AI coach and what we found from this is that the conversations that I'm now having with my students are more nuanced, they're more interesting. We're talking about third or fourth order insights rather than those same conversations that we used to have. And so this is great for two reasons. One, it's more effective for our students, and two, it makes my time more meaningful. I love those conversations that I get to have that are much deeper with my students.
Eduardo
Wow. So it lets you get deeper quicker.
Naomi Bagdonis
Yeah, Absolutely.
Eduardo
Wonderful. Nir, how are you using AI?
Nir Halevi
So it's great to hear about how others use AI. Similar to Christian, I've benefited on the research front. So one research question that I'm really fascinated by currently is where do strategic surprises come from? So when I say strategic surprises, I mean major unexpected events that are caused by other decision makers around us. With AI, I can now create videos. For example, in Sora, I've created recently a video of an improbable, unlikely event. And I can present these events in video form to research participants to see how they adapt to strategic surprises, learn from them, react to them, and so on. So before, AI couldn't kind of create videos of improbable, kind of unlikely events and use them in research. I would say on the teaching front, as a psychologist, as a teacher, I'm a little worried that when people go more often to AI for advice, for guidance, they go less to other humans. And one impact AI has had on my teaching is I'm now designing my course, designing my assignments in a way that will increase connectedness between students, but also between students and their networks. So, for example, in my negotiation class, I encourage students to reach out to people in their network, interview them about their negotiation experience, learn from their expertise, help them fulfill their needs for relatedness. Make sure I increase connectedness, to make sure we don't go to AI at the expense of human contacts, maintaining connections between people.
Eduardo
So asking people to do something that AI couldn't do, which is go to their own personal networks. Very interesting. Alison, how about you? How are you using AI?
Alison Kluger
Matt, I think you and I have something similar in that when I teach strategic communication, it's really about getting your authentic voice. So what we say to our students is, you can use AI. You can use it to help you structure or organize and get a sense of your messaging. But we're going to be able to tell because truthfully, it's very polished, sometimes a little robotic. But what we want in communication is, is for you to be differentiated and for us to really understand the why behind your actions or the why behind your thoughts. What I love about AI is that it does help people structure so that you can fill it in with your personal stories, with studies that you have with statistics, but anything that makes it more textured. And I also think that AI is something that we have to figure out how to naturally integrate. Don't go all in and turn all your power over. Think about how it can enhance your personal brand and what you're trying to deliver.
Eduardo
That notion of authenticity, as you said, and authentic voice is really critical. One way I'm using the tool in the classes I teach, I'm very interested in, and have been for a while, spontaneous speaking. How do we speak in the moment? And one of the counterintuitive notions is you can actually prepare to be spontaneous. And AI is a great tool to help you do that. So if you know you have a job interview or you're going to speak to the board, go to AI and say, going to speak to the board about this. What are three questions I might get asked? And then practice answering those questions, Much like an athlete would do drills to practice for certain situations, you can do the same. Not to memorize answers, but just to train those muscles for how to respond. So I find AI is a useful tool for that as well. I really appreciate the different ways in which you're using AI, encouraging people to connect more, giving a deeper, higher or lower order connections, and really helping people to understand the importance of their authentic voice. Really, really important. So for the final question, I'd like to ask the panelists. So this is where you can begin to think of your questions, because we'd love to get those shortly. I'd like each of you to share something you're working on currently that really excites you. And I'll give you imaginary extra credit if you can turn some of that into advice for all of us in the room. So, Nir, why don't we start with you?
Nir Halevi
Thank you. 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. Now, what do I mean by a broken hierarchy? A broken hierarchy has four characteristics. It is ultra competitive, it is unkind, it is unjust, and it's unstable. And when a hierarchy has all of these characteristics at the same time, there is no justification for hierarchy anymore. It does not serve collective purpose. It does not benefit individual well being. And so through my own research on hierarchy over the past 15 years, and by kind of reading and consuming a lot of research from our colleagues in the field, I've developed a recipe for how to fix broken hierarchies. And the book kind of talks about all the ways in which hierarchies are broken and how to fix them. So the recipe can be captured with just three letters. The acronym is cpr. That may resonate with the audience. C stands for common values. And that connects me with kind of what you said before about finding kind of the values that we live by and that can turn us into a community, a meaningful community. The PUI stands for pluralism, and R stands for relatedness. And if you heard me speaking before about pluralism and relatedness, it's no coincidence. As we all know, the mission of our school is change lives, change change organizations, change the world. And so I guess my advice for everyone here is to think about the ways in which we can fix slightly broken hierarchies around us. Right? So I think it's a big mission. I hope that the book can help with that mission a little bit. And then we'll kind of live up to the expectations of this school by changing five organizations in the world.
Eduardo
I really like this idea of looking at the problems that we have within our organizations in terms of hierarchy. What's going on in the hierarchy, and then Instead of calling 911, try to administer your own CPR to help. That I'd like to hear next from Naomi, if you don't mind.
Naomi Bagdonis
Great.
Eduardo
What's something you're studying and working on?
Naomi Bagdonis
So we mentioned this course, A New Type of Leader. And the premise of that is it used to be that leaders needed to be revered. Now they need to connect and create organizations that foster human flourishing. What do we mean by human flourishing? So I was in conversation with Deb Kupp the other day, who's the president of Microsoft Americas. And Deb was saying, you know, we did all this research over the years to understand what are the greatest correlates between what's going on with our employees and our employee well being and the growth of the business. What are the most interesting correlated factors? And what they found was that the answer to the question, I feel I can be my most authentic self at work was the one that was most correlated with the growth of the organization. And so what does this mean? That how do we create environments where people feel they can be their authentic selves? So I also teach a course here at the business school called Humor Serious Business about the power of humor in leadership. And there's a wealth of research showing that bringing humor to work diffuses tension, makes us more creative, makes us more effective as leaders. And the one most powerful insight that we have from that body of work that helps bring more authenticity is around knowing your humor style. So over the last 10 years, my partner in crime in the business school, Dr. Jennifer Aker, and I have done research to understand that there are four broad styles of humor. So I'm going to say them really quickly, and I want you all to think in your heads about what your style is. So first is the driver. Drivers are bold, unafraid to ruffle feathers for a laugh. They're that one who gets asked to give a wedding toast and gives just a devastating roast instead. Opposite is the sweetheart. So sweethearts are understated. They're earnest, honest. They warm up a room with their humor. Next is the sniper. Snipers are dry, witty, sarcastic, masters of the unexpected. Dig. And then lastly is the magnet. Magnets are charismatic, outgoing, not afraid to be a bit sillier with their humor. And so understanding your own humor style. And by the way, if you go to humorseriously.com you can take a quiz that tells you what your style is, is a real powerful unlock to feel more authentic at work and also to unlock greater authenticity with your colleagues. Did I get the extra credit?
Eduardo
You get the extra credit.
Christian Wheeler
Come on.
Matt Abrahams
Absolutely.
Eduardo
The power of levity in all of our interactions is really important, and I owe a big thanks to you and Jennifer for helping me see that power of levity. But how it can lead to authenticity, I think is really fascinating. Thank you. Alison, what's something you're working on?
Alison Kluger
Well, you already did a plug for me at the beginning, so I'm going to continue on that. I just released my first book that I co authored, and it's called brand up 2.0. And the chapters that I wrote were on how executive presence and reputation management are intertwined with how you influence people and your own personal brand. And so I've already covered a little bit of reputation management. But for my takeaway points, I'm going to talk a little bit about executive presence. And all of us here, we have some level of executive presence, but it is a learned skill. And according to a study, executive presence is made of three different factors. One is your appearance, the other is communication, and then the other is gravitas. Now, your appearance doesn't mean you have to be a supermodel or a Dandy or dress beautifully, inexpensively. What it means is, are you dressed appropriately for the work that you're supposed to do? And in a survey, what men and women actually notice about each other is not how short the skirt is, how much makeup, whether that's a great tie. They look at you and say, can you do the job? So lots of wrinkles, big brows that are not plucked, messy hair, maybe sweatpants. In a certain environment, the message is, maybe you're lazy or you didn't care enough about your own appearance. How are you going to care about what you're doing? So even though it seems a little judgmental, it's a power tool for you show up dressed appropriately. The second one is communication, which we talk about all the time. And that's, are you messaging effectively? Are you synthesizing? Are you concise? Are you aware of what your audience needs and wants? That makes you a better leader and gives you more power. Finally, there's this quality called gravitas. I know you've all heard of it, but for a visual, think of a swan that's just gliding on the water, right? And what do you think of? You think of elegant, poised, in control, but under the water, the little web feet are going crazy to keep that swan on top of the water. And so gravitas is ignoring those feet. It's kind of what Christian said, which is being comfortable, being uncomfortable, but it's letting people feel that you're in charge. And even if you don't know the answer, it's saying, you know, I don't know the answer, but I know who does. I'm going to send you to Matt or Naomi or Nir or Christian. And so it's making people feel taken care of. And the final thing I want to say, because Naomi said something that made me think, which is it's important to opt into new opportunities and not talk yourself out of it with a mindset. And a lot of us say, well, that's not me, or I've never done that. But what I always say is, the deliverable is never five minutes from the ask. So we all have to be our full leader with a lot of executive presence. Say, yes, I'll do it, and then you can go figure it out.
Eduardo
So this notion of appearance, the notion of communication, gravitas, really make for strong executive presence. Thank you. So, Christian, how about something you're studying?
Christian Wheeler
If you want engagement from your written materials, don't title it using a question, title it using a statement. So you could say, green tea has health benefits. Question mark or green tea has health benefits. What our research shows is that across a wide variety of different forums such as Reddit posts or academic articles or newspaper headlines, titles that are phrased as questions get lower levels of engagement as judged by upvotes or academic citations or click throughs than titles that are framed as statements.
Eduardo
One of the things I'm investing a lot of time studying is facilitated interaction meetings moderating. These are things that take a lot of cognitive effort and from a communication point of view I think are the most challenging types of communication because you don't just have to take care of what you're saying, you have to take care of what others are saying and manage the time and goals and agendas. And a takeaway that I think all of us should think about is the pre work we can do to set up success. I think the most underutilized communication expectation setting tool is the calendar invite. None of us think about our calendar invites. We just slap a URL or a room number and maybe an agenda. But there's so much we could do to set expectations and set ourselves up for success. So I'm spending a lot of time thinking about how do we help people facilitate interactions and make those go more smoothly and achieve the goals that they're trying to achieve. Thank you to all of you for your time today. Thank you for your support and thank you to these panelists for sharing their.
Matt Abrahams
Insight and their knowledge with us. Thank you for joining us for this special me to we live recorded episode. Be sure to listen to both episodes for this event. To learn more. Please listen to Allison kluger in episode 2 Naomi Bagdonis in episode 13 Nir Halevi in episode 30 Christian Wheeler in episode 18. This episode was produced by Ryan Campos and me, Matt Abrahams. Our music is from Floyd Wonder. With special thanks to the Podium podcast company. Please find us on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. Be sure to subscribe and rate us. Also follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram and check out fastersmarterio for deep dive videos, English language learning content and our newsletter. Please consider our Premium offering. You can find it at Faster Smarter IO Premium.
Podcast Summary: Think Fast Talk Smart – Episode 194: Live Lessons in Levity and Leadership: Me2We 2025 Part 1
Release Date: April 1, 2025
In Episode 194 of Think Fast Talk Smart, host Matt Abrahams delves into the intricate world of leadership and communication with a distinguished panel of Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) faculty. Recorded live at the Stanford Executive Education's Lead Me to We conference in front of nearly 800 attendees, this episode brings together four experts—Alison Kluger, Christian Wheeler, Nir Halevi, and Naomi Bagdonis—to share their insights on reputation management, leadership dynamics, the role of AI in modern communication, and the power of humor in business.
The episode kicks off with Matt Abrahams introducing the panelists and setting the stage for a deep dive into strategic communication and leadership. He highlights the unique format of this live recording, emphasizing that while Matt will guide the conversation in this installment, the next part will feature live audience questions.
Speaker: Alison Kluger (00:03:01 - 04:57)
Alison Kluger, MBA Class of 1978 Lecturer in Organizational Behavior, opens the discussion by emphasizing the critical alignment between self-perception and how others perceive you. She states:
“How you perceive yourself has to match how you land on others. So you might think you're doing great, and others might think not so great.” (04:03)
Key Takeaways:
Alison underscores that reputation is a personal currency that can open doors, highlighting the importance of strategic reputation management in both personal and professional realms.
Speaker: Nir Halevi (06:05 - 07:24)
Nir Halevi, Jagdeep and Roshni Singh Professor of Organizational Behavior, shares his experiences working with Stanford’s athletic department. He introduces the concept of pluralism within team cultures, where multiple leaders with diverse styles coexist to enhance team performance.
“Our teams... have multiple captains who act as different role models. They create this pluralism, this culture that accepts contributions of different kinds.” (06:35)
Key Insights:
Nir’s approach demonstrates the value of leveraging diverse leadership within organizations to nurture a dynamic and inclusive culture.
Speaker: Christian Wheeler (08:05 - 11:15)
Christian Wheeler, Stratacom Professor of Management and Marketing, discusses the importance of comfort with discomfort and the evolving role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in leadership and communication.
“One foundational component... is learning how to be comfortable being uncomfortable.” (08:10)
“AI is something that can help structure your messaging but authentic voice comes from you.” (20:55)
Key Points:
Christian highlights the balance between leveraging AI for efficiency and maintaining genuine human connections to foster deeper, more meaningful interactions.
Speaker: Naomi Bagdonis (12:27 - 14:35)
Naomi Bagdonis, Lecturer in Management, introduces the concept of guiding principles and the Serendipity Fund as tools for fostering meaningful engagement and innovation.
“Designing for serendipity... I have my 15% Serendipity Fund, where 15% of my time and personal budget is allocated to pursuing unexpected opportunities.” (13:56)
Key Insights:
Naomi’s strategies underscore the importance of flexibility and openness to new experiences in achieving long-term success and innovation.
Discussion on AI Applications (14:35 - 20:55)
The panelists explore various applications of AI in their respective fields:
Christian Wheeler: Uses AI in research to analyze large data sets, such as categorizing over a million tweets for political analysis, enhancing the depth and efficiency of his studies.
“AI allows you to do things with data that you couldn't do otherwise.” (16:05)
Naomi Bagdonis: Integrates AI into teaching by developing AI coaches that provide initial feedback to students, enabling deeper and more meaningful subsequent interactions.
“We have an AI assistant for specific assignments, leading to more nuanced and insightful student conversations.” (16:25)
Nir Halevi: Utilizes AI to create simulations of strategic surprises for research purposes, examining how individuals and organizations adapt to unexpected events.
“AI can now create videos of improbable events and use them in research.” (18:21)
Alison Kluger: Encourages the use of AI for structuring and organizing messages while maintaining an authentic personal voice in communication.
“AI can help structure your messaging, but the personal stories and authenticity must come from you.” (19:52)
The discussion highlights the transformative potential of AI in enhancing research capabilities, teaching methodologies, and personal communication without compromising authenticity and human connection.
Speaker: Alison Kluger (26:41 - 29:28)
Alison delves into the components of executive presence, emphasizing that it is a learned skill composed of three factors:
“Executive presence is made of appearance, communication, and gravitas.” (28:00)
Alison illustrates gravitas with the metaphor of a swan gracefully gliding on water while paddling furiously underneath, representing the inner composure leaders must maintain.
Additionally, she encourages embracing new opportunities without self-doubt, asserting:
“The deliverable is never five minutes from the ask. Say, yes, I'll do it, and then you can go figure it out.” (29:10)
Speaker: Naomi Bagdonis (24:09 - 26:25)
Naomi explores the role of humor in leadership, presenting it as a powerful tool for fostering authenticity and enhancing workplace dynamics. She categorizes humor styles into four types:
“Understanding your own humor style is a powerful unlock to feel more authentic at work.” (25:30)
Naomi highlights that appropriate use of humor can diffuse tension, boost creativity, and make leaders more effective. She encourages leaders to identify their humor style through resources like humorseriously.com.
Speaker: Nir Halevi (22:13 - 23:51)
Nir discusses his forthcoming book, "Fixing Hierarchy," which addresses the flaws in traditional hierarchical structures within organizations. He identifies four characteristics of broken hierarchies:
“A broken hierarchy has four characteristics... it is ultra competitive, it is unkind, it is unjust, and it's unstable.” (22:30)
Nir proposes a remedy encapsulated in the acronym CPR:
“Think about administering your own CPR to fix broken hierarchies around you.” (24:08)
His approach advocates for fostering environments where common values and interconnectedness replace toxic competition and instability, aiming to create more just and supportive organizational cultures.
Matt wraps up the episode by summarizing the key themes discussed:
He encourages listeners to explore both parts of the Me2We series for a comprehensive understanding of the discussed topics.
Episode 194 of Think Fast Talk Smart offers a wealth of knowledge on effective communication and leadership. The panelists provide actionable insights on managing reputation, fostering inclusive and stable organizational cultures, leveraging AI without losing authenticity, and using humor as a strategic tool in business. Whether you're an aspiring leader or a seasoned executive, the strategies discussed in this episode are invaluable for enhancing your communication skills and leadership effectiveness.
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