Think Fast Talk Smart: Communication Techniques

“How you end something often can be as important, if not more important, than how you start.”
What’s the best way to wrap up a presentation? How do you stop yourself from repeating the same point? And what can you do when strong emotions start taking over? Matt Abrahams tackles these questions and more in this Ask Matt Anything episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, recorded with members of the Learning Community. He shares why a strong ending deserves as much attention as a strong opening, along with practical advice for holding attention, getting better at small talk, breaking repetitive speaking patterns, and channeling emotion more effectively.

Takeaways:
  • A strong ending reinforces what matters most. Return to your goal by reminding your audience what you want them to know, how you want them to feel, and what you want them to do next.
  • Engagement requires giving your audience something to do. Questions, physical participation, vivid language, and shared experiences can help capture attention and keep people involved in your message.

Activity:
  • Land the plane. Take the ending of an upcoming presentation or meeting and write one sentence for each part of your goal: what you want people to know, feel, and do. Use those three points to build a concise closing.

Episode Reference Links:

Connect:

 Chapters:

  • (00:00) - Introduction
  • (00:44) - Why Endings Matter
  • (02:16) - Ending With Your Goal
  • (03:38) - Bringing It Full Circle
  • (04:19) - Ending With a Call to Action
  • (06:22) - Breaking Repetitive Speaking Patterns
  • (08:50) - Keeping Your Audience Engaged
  • (12:08) - Building Confidence in Small Talk
  • (15:18) - Communicating Strong Emotions
  • (18:01) - Conclusion

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Creators and Guests

Host
Matt Abrahams
Lecturer Stanford University Graduate School of Business | Think Fast Talk Smart podcast host

What is 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 your communication skills to elevate your career and build stronger professional relationships.

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How you end something often can
be as important, if not more

important, than how you start.

My name's Matt Abrahams, and I
teach Strategic Communication at

Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Welcome to this special Ask Matt
Anything inside our learning community

of Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast.

I am thrilled to be here with Think
Fast, Talk Smart learning community

members from around the world and
sharing this with all of our listeners

and viewers as we come together to think
about important communication skills.

In a few minutes, I'm going to take
some questions from those joining

us, and then try to give some
answers that are helpful and useful.

But before that, I want to talk about how
we end our meetings and presentations.

Many of us just simply run out of time.

The most frequent way people end meetings
and presentations is something like this.

"I guess we're out of time.
Thanks." Not the most efficient

or effective way to end.

In fact, ending is really important.

The way people feel at the end
of an experience colors the way

they see that entire experience.

Think of this.

If you have an amazing holiday, a
great vacation, everything is perfect.

Yet on the flight home or the drive
home, there's a lot of traffic, things

are late, your luggage goes missing.

How do you feel about
the whole experience?

Often, that will negatively
color how it happened.

And the same is true in our communication.

If we end in a way that is off-putting
or goes too long or throws too much

additional information at people, their
experience of our entire meeting or

presentation could be more negative.

So we need to really think
about how do we land the plane?

How do we end in a way that
is effective and efficient?

And the efficient part
is really important.

As soon as people get a sense that
you're ending, they begin to check out.

Their attention begins to get distracted.

We need to stay focused.

I believe the most efficient way to
end a communication is to rely on the

goal that helped you focus the whole
communication in the first place.

Now, I am a huge fan of having a goal.

And to me, a goal has three parts,
information, emotion, and action.

What do you want the audience to know?

How do you want them to feel?

And what do you want them to do?

If you structure your entire
communication around your goal, you

should be able to invoke the goal,
speak the goal at the end to wrap up.

So I might start with gratitude.

I'm a big fan of gratitude.

Thank you for your time.

I hope you're leaving this meeting
or presentation knowing this, feeling

this way, and willing to do this.

Now, you might not like
those words, so change it.

But do the same thing.

Highlight the information
at the highest level.

Convey the emotion that you want people
to have, and then give the call to action,

the specific steps that you're asking for.

When you do that, you are
more efficient in how you end.

Because the reality is, as
soon as you signal you're

ending, actually think of this.

Think of your own behavior.

Say you're on a Zoom, a Team, a Meet, and
the meeting organizer, the person running

the meeting says, "In conclusion," what
is your pattern behavior, your habit?

Like Pavlov's dogs, you go up to
exit meeting, pull up your calendar

to see where you need to be next.

So as soon as somebody signals
ending, we begin checking out

and moving to the next thing.

So you have to be efficient.

Leveraging your goal makes sense.

If you don't like the goal
as an ending, that's okay.

Maybe you started with a story and you
want to return to that story at the end.

I love that kind of book ending where
you start and end in a similar way.

Still make it very efficient.

So endings matter.

In my experience, most people focus
on the beginnings and assume when I

get to the end, I'll figure it out.

You need to think about how you end.

It is as important, if not more
important, than how you start.

I just came back from helping people
at a conference, and several of the

people, as I was helping them prepare,
had, let's just say, less efficient and

effective endings than they could have.

And we really worked on it.

So it's top of mind for me and
hopefully will be helpful for you.

Happy to take questions about
that, how we end, but I'd love

to take questions about anything.

This is an Ask Matt Anything, an AMA.

I do have a few questions that people sent
in in advance who couldn't be here, and

I'm happy to start with those as well.

Kenji, I see you have a question.

Can you just tell us your name, Kenji,
and where you're calling in from?

Hi, Matt.

I'm from Seattle.

I'm glad to join this meeting.

My question about ending, so I'm gonna
be in a meeting in a week, and then

I want people to join my community.

So I will show my QR code.

Here is our way to join, and then
you have to wait for a while, right?

And then what should I
say during that time?

And then I want to add something after.

Yes, absolutely.

So in your case, the call to action
is for people to take a picture of

the QR code, so they can actually go
to the site that you're looking for.

And the question is, what
do I do when I put that up?

'Cause we know people are gonna
fumble with their phones and have to

figure it out and click on the links.

So I do believe saying something would
be really useful, but make it something

that's not critically important.

So that's not the time to give out
the pass code or the discount code

because that's a lot of cognitive
stress for somebody who's trying to

take a picture or click on a link.

But I might reinforce something
that I've already said.

So you're starting a community.

Congratulations.

I've done that as well with the help
of a team, and it's a lot of work.

I might reinforce the
value of the community.

So I might say, "Here's a QR code
so you can take advantage of all the

goodness that we've been talking about.
Go ahead and take a picture, save the

link. And as you're doing that, just
remember this is a community where you

can…" And then you summarize some
of the things that you've said before.

So you're not giving net new information.

It's harder to take net new information
in when you're being asked to do a task.

So that would be my advice.

And good luck on the community.

Community, I think, is so important,
and we've heard so many great things

from those of you who are part of
our learning community, so thank you.

What other questions do we
have from those of you joining?

Would love to take some questions.

Excellent.

Cheri, please, can you tell
us where you're calling from?

Yeah.

Hi, Professor.

I'm from Chicago.

I'm a grad student, and like Kenji,
I've also started a community on my own.

And so I did a first event, and it was
so difficult for me, but it was really

good experience for me to do that.

And at the end, I kept repeating the same

sentences because I'm nervous
because it's an online event.

And because I'm nervous, I just
start repeating the same thing.

So that is one thing that I have
trouble, ending the sentences.

Okay, excellent.

So again, congratulations
on starting a community.

When we get nervous, we tend to fall
into patterns, and repetition of

what we're saying is a very common
pattern that people fall into.

Let me start by saying
repetition is not a bad thing.

Repetition can actually be very helpful.

Saying the same thing over and
over again reinforces that point.

So repeating isn't a bad thing to do.

Now, I want to just take a tangent there.

I just said the same thing
four times purposely to

demonstrate it's not that bad.

But if it's bothering you and there
are other things you want to say,

then we need to break that pattern.

And if what you are repeating is a
declarative sentence, then a great way

to do that is to switch the modality.

Ask a question.

So if you find yourself repeating
the same thing, think to yourself,

"What's a question I could ask here?"
Even if the question is on the same

topic, the fact that it is a question
breaks the pattern for you and sounds

different to the person who's listening.

So we have to have at least
enough awareness as we're

communicating to notice, okay,
I've got some repeating here.

Let me change up.

So instead of a declaration,
I might make a question.

If I'm using questions, I might
make an exclamation, right?

So change the type of communication,
and that will often break the pattern.

That said, another way is, again,
I'm not a big fan of memorizing.

I am a huge fan of practicing,
and having a structure can help.

So if you're using my favorite
structure, what, so what, now what,

and I find that I'm repeating myself
a lot in the what, I just encourage

myself to move to the so what.

So keeping my eye on where I'm taking
my audience through my structure is

another way to break that pattern.

And by the way, it builds confidence
either by changing the modality

or moving to the next step because
you feel like you're in control.

It's like, "Oh, I'm repeating myself.
I'll just ask a question. Now I feel

confident because I just took care of
a challenge I saw myself confronting."

So Cheri, I hope those two bits
of advice can be helpful for you.

I'm going to read one of the
questions that came in through

the community's discussion.

It's a question that comes
from, I think it's Halev.

And Halev asks, "Matt, I hear you talk
a lot about engagement, how you pull

people in and engage them. I struggle with
engagement. Are there certain engagement

techniques that seem to work better than
others?" So Halev, engagement is critical.

We live in a world where attention
is our most precious commodity.

Our attention is constantly being
pulled in different directions.

As a communicator, we want to focus that
attention, but not just in the moment.

We want to sustain it, and sustained
attention is what I call engagement.

And there are four
primary ways to do that.

The first is physical.

Get people doing something physical.

When people do something physical,
their brain will follow their body.

So what does that look like?

Maybe I take a poll.

I have people raise their hand.

Maybe I have people write something down.

If I'm virtual, I have them
do the reaction button or

type something into the chat.

Physical engagement gets people
involved Contrast that to mental

engagement, cognitive engagement.

Two major ways to do that.

One is to ask questions.

When you ask people questions, the brain
becomes much more active than when you

just tell them something passively.

So get more engaged
through asking questions.

When I teach, I never say, "Today we're
going to cover three topics." I say,

"Today we're going to answer three
questions." And then the other way to

do it is to use analogies, comparisons.

When you use analogies and
comparisons, it helps your audience

to leverage the way we learn.

We learn new things by comparing
them to existing things.

Third is linguistic, language.

If you can use people's names.

Have you noticed I've tried
to use people's names today?

When we hear our names,
we get more involved.

You can also use what I call
time traveling language.

I can take all of you into the future.

I can say, "Picture this. Imagine what
it would be like. What if…?" Those

phrases get you to see it in your mind's
eye, and that gets you more involved.

And then finally is any shared experience.

If I can highlight a shared experience.

This is where humor comes in.

If I can make you laugh, you can make
me laugh, that's a shared experience.

Or if I refer to a keynote or
the all-hands presentation,

that's a shared experience.

So physical, mental, linguistic,
shared experience are the

major ways to engage people.

So Halev's question is,
what are the most effective?

And it really varies by person.

My mother, for example, was
an elementary school teacher.

Physical engagement is
her name of the game.

I mean, when she teaches, when she
talks, she gets you doing things,

and that works really well for her.

For me, it's more that mental
and the linguistic engagement.

Most of my presentations, if you
watch them online, will start with

some kind of time traveling language.

So everybody has to find their own, but
it's important to know the different

paints you have on the palette: physical,
mental, linguistic, shared experience.

I hope that helps, Halev.

Uh, we've had a couple new people
join us into the community live.

Thank you for coming and joining today.

Curious if anybody else has a question.

I know Cheri has another one.

Do you have another question, please?

Yeah.

Thank you.

So when I'm talking to people, I
usually tend to talk, like, work stuff.

So I'll just give some background to it.

I'm a student assistant in my university,
and other student staff will be talking

to professional staff, like all kinds
of stuff, and I only talk work stuff.

So even though I try doing that, it
seems like I'm not able to involve much.

I'm not really sure why.

And when I'm talking other
stuff other than work stuff, my

confidence seems little bit low.

Thank you.

Many of us can feel less confident when
we're communicating about things that

are not our expertise or that are more
chit-chat, small talk, just conversation.

I want to give you some suggestions
in a couple different ways.

First and foremost, small talk,
chit-chat, non-work communication

is actually really important.

It's how we build relationship,
trust, and connection.

It requires that we do some work.

Small talk requires big work,
but it has big payoffs as well.

So the best thing to do if you
are uncomfortable with that is

to go in not thinking, "I have to
add a lot of value. I have to say

something that's really important
and interesting." Your job really is

just to keep the conversation going.

So asking questions, making observations,
paraphrasing what others are saying,

those are all great ways to contribute
to a conversation, to keep it moving

forward, without having to put
a lot of pressure on yourself to

add something of tremendous value.

So is there an observation in the
environment that you can highlight

like, "Wow, it's colder in here than it
was in the other room," or, "Everybody

seems to be wearing a similar color."
Is there a question you could ask?

You know, "That keynote was great.

What did you take away from it?" By
using these tools or paraphrasing

what others have said, say, "Hey, that
point about this is really important."

That's all you've done.

You've just summarized a point.

So those are ways of making contributions
and feeling a little more comfortable

moving the conversation forward.

And from that, you then build confidence.

So in the moment, using those
tools can be really helpful.

Additionally, you can actually
prepare for some of these situations.

So if you know you're going to be at
an academic event and you know there

are mixers after or you're gonna be
meeting people during the break, think

to yourself, "What are one or two topics
or ideas that I would love to bring

forward?" Not that you've scripted the
conversation, but that you have an idea.

Again, it's like having a
goal for a presentation.

It gives you directionality.

And then finally, you know, what's
really interesting is you can use AI

and LLMs to practice, to test this.

There's the chatbot of me
in the learning community.

Others can get it if they're
not in the learning community.

And you can actually say, "Hey, Chat
Matt, I would love to work on my small

talk skills. Let's role play an academic
conference during a break." And I,

through the chat tool, will actually
talk with you, and you can practice.

And then you can ask the tool, "How
did that go? What could I have done

differently?" And it'll give you advice.

So you can actually practice this
kind of stuff, not to script it,

but to just feel more comfortable.

So I hope that helps.

Thank you.

We have a question here from Sylvia.

Sylvia is really curious about,
"When I have some strong feelings and

emotions about something, how do I
express that without sounding overly

emotional?" This is hard for me.

I am a very passionate person, but
sometimes being so passionate gets in

the way of what I'm passionate about.

So one thing that really
helps me is to recognize it.

Say, "Oh, I'm getting really charged
up here," either positively or

negatively, and naming it, saying,
"I'm getting really excited," or,

"This is really upsetting me."

What we know from mindfulness is that
when you name an, an emotion, you

actually give yourself a little bit
of space between your experience of

the emotion and the emotion itself,
which allows you to do something.

So first is to learn to
recognize it and name it.

So say to yourself, "This is me
being upset. This is me being really

excited." The second thing to do is
to figure out a way to downregulate.

So for me, what I do is I tell stories.

Now, I'm not saying that's the
right way for you, but find some

communication technique that you can use.

So when I get really amped
up, I'll tell a story.

And for me to tell a story, I have to set
the context, I have to give the scene,

I have to think about what's important.

And it's not that I'm devaluing
my emotion, but I'm putting

my emotion to work to help you
understand it through storytelling.

Rather than just come at you with the
intensity of like, "You should do this

because it's the best thing ever," tell
a story about it, or give a testimonial

of somebody else who's had a benefit, or
share some statistics that can add value.

So Sylvia, when you find yourself in
those positions, first acknowledge it.

Say, "This is me feeling this way." And
then second, think about how can you

use a tool like a story, a testimonial,
some data to convey that emotion.

But in so doing, it will downregulate
your emotion and reduce the intensity

that your audience or the other person
you're communicating with will see it.

So thank you.

Allow me to simply say thank you to all
of you who have joined us live today.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you for being part
of the learning community.

And thank you to those of you listening
who are learning community members

and those of you in the broader
Think Fast Talk Smart audience.

Please check out our learning
community at fastersmarter.io/learning.

The learning community has lots of
cool things, quests for specific topics

like persuasion, anxiety management,
some video lessons, discussions,

and lots of other things, including
the AI chatbot I talked about.

Thank you all for your time.

Thank you for supporting Think
Fast Talk Smart, and let's all

together think fast and talk smart.

Thank you for joining us for
another AMA episode of Think

Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast.

To learn more on a variety of
communication topics, check out our

extensive back catalog of episodes on your
favorite player or at fastersmarter.io.

This episode was produced by Katherine
Reed, Ryan Campos, and me, Matt Abrahams.

Our music is from Floyd
Wonder, with special thanks

to the Podium Podcast Company.

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