Think Fast Talk Smart: Communication Techniques

Why good communication is the key to good communities.

Community and communication go hand-in-hand. For Sandy Pentland, the culture and cohesion of any group “has to do with the stories [people] tell each other.”
Pentland is a professor at MIT, where he helped create and direct the MIT Media Lab. As a pioneer in computational social science, he’s using data to map social networks and decode communication. In his latest book, Shared Wisdom: Cultural Evolution in the Age of AI, he explores the interplay between human culture, technological development, and societal change — arguing that communication is the tool that enables groups to achieve these advancements and to cohere throughout them. “Stories are the stuff of culture,” he says. “Sharing stories educates the community… defining the worldview and culture of that group.”
In this episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, Pentland and host Matt Abrahams explore what our communication patterns reveal about group dynamics and organizational health. From the “honest signals” in our interactions to strategies for strengthening remote work connections, Pentland shares how better communication can fuel more connected communities.

Episode Reference Links:

Connect:

Chapters:

  • (00:00) - Introduction
  • (02:21) - Honest Signals & Human Behavior
  • (04:14) - The Sociometric Badge Research
  • (05:44) - Human Connection in Remote Work
  • (07:01) - Organizations as Networks
  • (09:33) - How Ideas Spread in Groups
  • (12:44) - Bringing the Right People Together
  • (14:12) - Stories as Cultural DNA
  • (16:55) - The Final Three Questions
  • (22:01) - Conclusion

 ********
Thank you to our sponsors.  These partnerships support the ongoing production of the podcast, allowing us to bring it to you at no cost.

Strawberry.me. Get 50% off your first coaching session today at Strawberry.me/smart

Creators and Guests

Host
Matt Abrahams
Lecturer Stanford University Graduate School of Business | Think Fast Talk Smart podcast host
Guest
Alex 'Sandy' Pentland
Professor | Computer Scientist | Author

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.

Tune in every Tuesday for new episodes. Subscribe now to unlock your potential as a thoughtful, impactful communicator. Learn more and sign up for our eNewsletter at fastersmarter.io.

Matt Abrahams: Community and communication
not only have the same root word, but they

work together to make us more effective.

My name is Matt Abrahams and I
teach strategic communication at

Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Welcome to Think Fast
Talk Smart, the podcast.

Today I'm excited to have a
conversation with Sandy Pentland.

Sandy is a professor at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, where he helped

create and direct the MIT Media lab.

He's also a Stanford Institute
of Human-Centered AI Fellow.

Sandy is recognized as a
pioneer in computational social

science and wearable computing.

He has just released his newest
book, Shared Wisdom Cultural

Evolution in the Age of AI.

Well, welcome Sandy.

I have long admired your work and I'm
very excited for our conversation.

Sandy Pentland: Well, I'm
really happy to be here.

Matt Abrahams: Shall we get started?

Sandy Pentland: Yes, please.

Matt Abrahams: Well, let's
start with Honest Signals.

That's where I first got
to know you and your work.

Can you define what honest signals
are and how you studied them?

And then can you share how mastery
of these signals can actually be

effective tools to help us build
trust and foster relationships, more

than words might even be able to?

Sandy Pentland: A way to think about
this is that if you look at our

closest ancestors, big, great apes,
they actually communicate with hoots

and pants and other sorts of sounds.

Language seems to be built on top of that.

But we didn't get rid of it.

We kept it at its contrast to the words.

So you can tell when someone's
excited, of course, because they get

all, oh they, that's a signal, right?

And you can tell when they're not
paying attention because there's these

sort of awkward pauses sometimes.

And those are the things that are the
signals about what's going on in the

person's head and about the relationship.

And the ones that are most interesting,
I think to me, and perhaps to

your question, are the ones about
the patterns of interaction.

So it's not just about the person, it's
about how they interact with other people.

And we find that the pattern of people
using each other, communicating with

each other for help, both ways, is
almost a perfect predictor of trust.

Which is really interesting.

So it's a relationship where you give
me something and I give you something

back, and we do that for a while.

It also is something that's very
closely related to friendship.

People who do that, say about out
work things, tend to become friends.

And not just occasionally, very regularly.

And if you look at groups of people, you
see these same sorts of patterns define

who's interested in a topic and who's not.

In other words, what's the community?

And so this is not something we're
generally aware of, but you can

look at these patterns and once
you begin thinking about them, you

can say, yeah, that makes sense.

This guy must be interested in it and
he gets something valuable out of it.

So yeah, there's a certain
level of trust there.

Matt Abrahams: What I found
really interesting is how you

actually looked at these patterns.

How did you study and look at
the reciprocity that you found?

Sandy Pentland: Oh, we've
done it a number of ways.

The one that people always remember
is we built these little badges that

would wear around your neck, and they
had a microphone that didn't record the

words, but did record how you moved and
where you were and your tone of voice.

And that turned out to be very
informative about what was going on.

For instance, who was leading a
group, who was dissatisfied with it?

And that's what the Honest
Signals book is all about.

Matt Abrahams: Did you find that there
are certain signals that are more

likely or more effective in determining
power in relationships than others?

So is it vocal intonation versus
gestures versus physical orientation?

Sandy Pentland: I think that's not
the right way to think about it.

What it is, is certain patterns
of interaction, and those are

accented by excitement or delay.

In fact, we built a little, uh, sort
of AI tool, which is actually in most

call centers, and what it does is it
tells the person when to listen, when

to shut up, when to be excited, when
to be a little cautious about it.

What it does is it gets rid of the
call center people fighting with the

customers, so everybody has a better time.

Matt Abrahams: What I've taken away
from the Honest Signals work that

you've done is that observing the
patterns can be very insightful to what

the results will be, and many of us
don't pay attention to those patterns.

Sandy Pentland: No.

'Cause we're focused on the words or
we're thinking about something else.

Yeah.

Matt Abrahams: I'm curious, now that
we've shifted more to remote and hybrid

work, what are your thoughts about that
impact on Honest Signals and are there

new things that we should develop and
hone to help maintain stronger ties now

that we're doing a lot of this remotely.

Sandy Pentland: The obvious thing
about say remote things and Zoom

and all that is that it gets rid
of a lot of the body language.

The tone of voice is diminished.

You can't tell about a lot of things.

What I try to do with these things is have
casual interactions, and in fact, we've

built a little tool to help you do that.

It's all free, all that.

It's called Deliberation.io.

It lets people talk about things
in a sort of less structured way.

And prevents overly large
voices and gives people sort of

summaries of what's going on.

But the real thing is you have
to have a personal connection

that goes with these patterns.

So when I do Zoom calls, I almost
always start with five minutes of

how are the kids doing and, you know,
what's the weather, so that there's a

sense that people actually care about
the human and not just about the work.

That's not the best thing because it's
so much better to have that water cooler

conversation or the little conversation
after the meeting or before the meeting.

Those are when things really get
established in terms of trust and

alignment and things like that.

Matt Abrahams: It's really
interesting 'cause when you and

I were walking over to the studio
we're in today, you did just that.

We had this small talk to sort of
get connected and it's very useful.

You've pioneered the use of
data to map social networks.

How can this data be used to identify
communication bottlenecks in a company or

help create more effective and efficient
teams once you understand the network?

Sandy Pentland: We started with
these little things that recorded

sort of where you were, the tone of
voice, whether you were talking to

people or stuff, and we began to see
that there were these bottlenecks.

You say, these people don't talk
to those people, they're gonna have

a hard time coordinating, right?

But what you can do with these is you
can look at patterns of Slack messages,

look at email, look at things like
that, and you can do a really good

job of saying, well, this group talks
to this group, but not to that group.

And maybe that's a problem and
you want to think about that.

We are building things
here, we call AI buddies.

It's basically a replacement for the
manual that you never read, or all

the newsletters that you never read.

But what it does is it informs you
about what other people are doing that

are relevant to you and what's going
on in the company or the organization,

just to give you more context.

And more sort of social awareness, and
that's a huge amount of it, particularly

with remote work, with international
organizations, you lose context,

you're not really in the loop anymore,
and that's something that AI's can

do really easily and fairly safely.

Because, you know, they're not likely to
hallucinate things like that very much.

It's sort of like an automated
newsletter that's meant to the

particular thing you're doing
right now, and people love it.

It's good.

It helps people connect.

It helps business leaders
actually change the organization.

I was talking to the chairman of a
large consulting firm, and he was going

to reorganize how he ran his three
hundred and fifty thousand employees,

so he accepted the idea that there'd be
fewer people in office, but use these

sort of AI buddy techniques to have
more remote people, more in the loop,

and also to bring in people that are
sort of on particular gigs or projects

and have the confidence that they'll
know what to do because they have this

customized news and reminder service.

Matt Abrahams: I really like that idea
of giving people the information they

need when they need it, to fill in
those gaps and give the context, and

AI allows you to make it very specific.

Sandy Pentland: In many ways, not a new
idea at all, but the new AI's are actually

pretty good at this without all the
concerns about hallucinations or whatever.

And you don't need the frontier
model to do this at all.

You can do this with any
of the open source ones.

Matt Abrahams: So something that's
germane and available to everybody.

In your book, Social Physics, you
discuss how ideas flow through a group.

What's the best way for a leader to
seed a new idea in a team, and what

communication patterns will help
that idea gain momentum over time?

Sandy Pentland: You told me about
this question and I sort of don't

like it, and the reason is, is this
idea of the leader in control and the

leader defining the language about
it, and those are both mistakes.

Because in a group, what you need
to have is you need to have people

understand why something happens
and what are the consequences

and what do other people think.

The reason we have so much polarization in
this country, turns out that people just

don't know what the other people think.

If you set up a situation that let
them know that, then they become rather

dramatically more aligned with each other.

It's really rather shocking.

So the same thing is true
in companies and so forth.

So what a leader should do is say,
here's something I'd like to discuss.

Here's this idea.

Have people talk about
it, comment about it.

And that's why we built
this thing, Deliberation.io.

You can just use it, it's free,
but what it does is it doesn't

allow the loud voices to dominate.

And what you wanna do with this
is you want to look at what

is the language people use.

I did some stuff with some political
survey people, and they were talking

about inflation and stuff, but humans,
most people don't talk about inflation.

They talk about cost of living.

Oh yeah, sure, they're related, but
one is far more salient than the other.

Much more connected.

And so, you need to have your conversation
in the terms that the people understand.

You need to listen to them because
then they feel like they've been heard

and they actually have been heard
because they understand more about it.

They've influenced a little bit.

And all of that is this notion
of shared wisdom, which enables

action by the community, right?

So collective action.

'Cause that's what you really want.

You don't really care about
the ideas and the conversation.

You want to actually do stuff.

But that depends on having shared
understanding, shared wisdom about

what's the right thing to do.

And that depends on people
understanding each other.

Matt Abrahams: So it's not the
leader coming in and saying,

thou shalt work on this.

It's really posing questions that
bring forth what's salient and even

linguistically, what those words are that
people use to describe what's salient.

Sandy Pentland: Another sort of
aspect of this is getting the right

people in the room, the people that
actually have skin in the game.

So org charts, I have this joke is if
you have an org chart, you have a map

of how to have a stupid organization,
because org charts don't reflect the

sort of piece by piece, task by task
type of thing that needs to happen.

There's things that cut across
all these different things.

You need to have a way of getting those
people discuss things in the same room

and feel like they can really do it.

It's intended to deal with some of
that, not that it's perfect, but,

but it gives you an idea of how you
can actually build digital media

that work for these sorts of things.

Matt Abrahams: So using the tools to help.

So you have to have the
right people in the room.

You have to use the right language, and
you have to give people an opportunity

to understand how others see it.

And that's how you propagate ideas.

Sandy Pentland: That's right.

They have to sort of in their own heads
say, oh yeah, that's why we're doing this.

Matt Abrahams: You mentioned
earlier that you study communities.

I'm curious, what is the most surprising
or counterintuitive finding your

research has shown on how people
interact and form communities?

Sandy Pentland: I think the main
thing is how smart communities can be.

There's this sort of general sort of
jokes, you know, stupid communities,

madness, you know, et cetera.

But actually when we look at things
like people making financial decisions,

people making other sort of decisions, if
you have good patterns of communication

between people and they have skin in the
game and they're actually focused on it,

they're usually better than the math.

Take something like economics or
trading where you know you can

do all this quantitative stuff.

The community version of that, which
you know, has people who know the math,

but now they're also talking to each
other, works better over the long term

than the people who just use the math.

And the reason is, is that the
community version of it has a broader

view of what are the risks and
opportunities than the math does.

So it's a sort of myopic view
when you're just trying to solve

the equations or engineer it.

You need to ask, how does
this fit with everything?

Have things changed?

What are the things that are coming up?

And we see that again and again.

So it's possible to have wisdom,
which is a capacity to make

good decisions as a group, that
outshines the scientific things.

Not ignoring them, but incorporating
them in a broader context.

And I think that's the thing that
people don't know and don't respect.

Matt Abrahams: I wanna turn
our attention to your new book.

In your new book, Shared Wisdom,
you state, and I'm quoting, it is

important to remember that story
sharing is as least as much for

communities as it is for individuals.

Can you help unpack this quote and
discuss what story sharing does for us?

Sandy Pentland: So the way to think
about human society, and we'll imagine

that it's five hundred years ago or ten
thousand years ago, is that there's a

constant conversation between people
about, oh, this thing's interesting.

Oh, that's terrible.

Why did you think of that?

And that's a type of deliberation
to establish community norms.

We like this.

This is a good thing.

We don't like that.

That's a bad thing, right?

And it's not a formal thing like where
we sit down, we're gonna have the rules.

It's this community sense or wisdom
about how things should operate.

And so that's really critical that
you have people understand that why

things are this way and not that way.

And had the stories of, oh yeah, so and
so ate those berries and got deadly sick.

Don't do it, right?

The sharing of stories educates the
community 'cause it's passed on.

It helps them define their culture.

And they're incredibly sticky, also.

If you look at Australian aborigines,
they have stories, these, uh, songs

about where to go and what to do
that are authenticated to be more

than seven thousand years old.

It's just incredible.

And what that's doing is defining the
worldview and culture of that group.

And different groups have different
cultures, different songs that they sing.

Matt Abrahams: Storytelling is a great
vehicle to get your information across,

but you're taking it to a new level.

That stories help a society, a culture,
a community to get their ideas across.

So it's not just about the individuals.

Sandy Pentland: Stories
are the stuff of culture.

You know, people talk about, oh,
we need a good culture in this

company, or whatever, right?

That has to do with the stories
you're telling each other.

And it's not the official like
newsletter or the CEO, it's the

things that people tell each other.

Usually before or after the meeting or,
and the lunch room, something like that.

And those stories permeate in various
ways to be able to define the attitudes

of people, which is the culture.

And what we know also is that
culture determines a great deal

about the decisions we make
and about the outcomes we get.

So you really want it
to get it to be right.

And there's two ways.

One is to make sure that good
stories spread, but you also need

to be able to have the stuff of
stories to be able to spread.

So you need to do things that are
actually will help shape the community

by saying, this is what we do.

When somebody has a problem, we do
this, and the conversation should end

up being, yeah, we see why that's true.

Matt Abrahams: Lots of rich ideas there.

One thing I'm taking away from what
you just shared is, if I am in a

leadership position, in an organization,
in a group, one of the ways to really

understand the culture is to listen
to the stories that are being told.

Versus taking a survey or
saying the culture is this,

because I have said it is that.

So this notion of listening and
observing can be really helpful.

Before we end, I like to ask
three questions of all my guests.

One I make up just for you and
two are similar across everybody.

Are you up for that?

Sandy Pentland: Yeah, sure.

Matt Abrahams: You are knee deep in AI.

I'm curious what, what most excites
you about AI and where it's headed?

Sandy Pentland: The part that excites
me most about it, first of all,

I'm completely irritated by all the
frontier model type of stuff, because

that's not what people are gonna use.

People are gonna use this much
lighter weight specific type of stuff.

I also don't like the sort of model where
there's this big central company that

runs everything and owns all your data.

So I'm a real advocate of sort of personal
AI tools to help people get along.

Also for small businesses and so forth.

I think that what we can get
is a lot more of the things

that we've been talking about.

You can get things that are much
more tuned to the preferences

and needs of particular people
in particular communities.

And I think that will do an awful lot
for making this more agile, for being

able to address problems and feel a lot
more like a member of the community that

is doing something that we care about.

Matt Abrahams: I really like that idea of
using AI tools to help us even feel more

tightly connected as part of a community.

Sandy Pentland: Yeah, so AI for
conversations, AI for community, not

AI for big brain super intelligences
that order you around, right?

Matt Abrahams: Yeah, absolutely.

Question number two, who is a
communicator that you admire and why?

Sandy Pentland: I like Steven Pinker.

He has the courage to take things
that everybody believes and aren't

really necessarily exactly right and
attack it sort of head on and with

a lot of evidence and good argument.

And at least what he does is even if you
don't buy what his thesis is, he changes

the conversation substantially and he
picks things that are really important.

Matt Abrahams: I love the fact
that you and he are friends because

you both do such interesting work.

He was a guest on the show and
really enjoyed talking to him

about indirect communication.

Question three, our final question.

What are the first three ingredients that
go into a successful communication recipe?

Sandy Pentland: I think that the things
you need to do is first of all, know

what people are talking about, right?

So you need some way to be in the loop
about what everybody's doing, and that

requires avoiding dominance and status
things, because I'm not gonna tell my boss

or my boss's boss what I really think.

So it has to be something where
there's a certain level of anonymity,

but also social consequence about it.

And then you need to have a conversation
about what should we do so that people

understand what everybody's views are
and why we're making certain choices.

And then you need to also ask people, how
are you going to help with doing this?

What's your role?

And I think that people
are willing to do things.

Matt Abrahams: Absolutely.

So I heard awareness of what the issues
are and trying to minimize the loud

voices in the room, synthesizing that
with the people, and then inquire into the

action that people are willing to take.

And I think those are really important
ingredients if you wanna affect

change, and your research certainly
is affecting change and how people

interact verbally and non-verbally.

Thank you for sharing your
wisdom with us today, and best of

luck on the book Shared Wisdom.

Sandy Pentland: I just hope it has
some effect on our institutions

and the way we do things.

So thank you very much for having me.

Matt Abrahams: Thank you for
joining us for another episode of

Think Fast Talk Smart, the podcast.

To learn more about nonverbal
communication, listen to

episode 137 with Dana Carney.

To learn more about communication
networks, check out episode 65 with

Michael Arena and Glenn Carroll.

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

Our music is from Floyd Wonder.

With thanks to 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, TikTok, and
Instagram, and check out fastersmarter.io

for deep dive videos, English language
learning content, and our newsletter.

Please consider our premium offering
for extended Deep Thinks episodes, and

much more at fastersmarter.io/premium.