333. Find the Vibe: Build Stronger Connections Through Communication Part 1 (Ad Free)

Matt Abrahams (0:03)

Our best relationships rely on connection, the ability to vibe with somebody else.

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 am super excited to speak with Adam Grant. Adam is an organizational psychologist and top-rated professor at the Wharton School. He's written several best-selling books such as Think Again and Hidden Potential. His latest book is Vibe, The Secrets of Strong Connections in a Lonely World. Beyond his academic research on motivation and workplace dynamics, he hosts the TED podcast Rethinking. It should be in everybody's queue.

Welcome, Adam. I have long admired your work and have enjoyed my conversations with many of your Wharton colleagues, Katie Milkman, Angela Duckworth, Wendy De La Rosa, and Jonah Berger. It's really exciting for me to meet you personally here. Thank you.

Adam Grant (0:56)

I'll try to live up to that. Great to be here, Matt.

Matt Abrahams (0:59)

Thank you. Shall we get started?

Adam Grant (1:00)

Bring it on.

Matt Abrahams (1:01)

All right. I'd like to initiate a conversation around public speaking and communication.

In your book, Hidden Potential, you share the story of how you went from a terrified to confident public speaker. Can you share what that anxiety was like for you and how you successfully learned to manage the anxiety to become a great well-known and well-sought after speaker?

Adam Grant (1:22)

Sharing the anxiety part is easy. I have vivid memories of knowing that I was going to have to get up in front of people and just shaking physically. I could see my hands moving and I couldn't control it. I was so jittery. Usually, that was the first cue actually is I would see it before I felt it. Then I would notice that my heart was racing. It felt like it was going to beat right out of my chest. I would notice that my breathing, it would get fast and shallow like I just finished a sprint.

Not only was it making me not want to get up in front of an audience, I didn't feel like I could deliver a coherent sentence because I couldn't catch my breath.

I felt like the only way to get through it, Matt, was just to rehearse it so often that my body had to get used to it. I wanted to put myself through a form of exposure therapy.

The only thing I could think to do was to put myself in a situation where the stakes were both higher and lower at the same time. I was in grad school at the time and I knew I was going to have to start teaching my own classes. I was terrified. I volunteered to give guest lectures for my friends' classes.

On the one hand, that was much scarier because I only had a 30 or 60 minute window to try to get through to these students and they were going to judge me just by that performance. I didn't have then the rest of the semester to recover if I stumbled or if I sounded like I was Darth Vader because I was breathing so heavily. But on the other hand, these students didn't have any real say over my future. They were going to hate my class and take my teaching evaluations and undermine my ability to get a lecturing job in the future or a professorship in the future. So I thought, okay, this is the perfect place to practice because I was under pressure. But at the end of the day, it didn't really matter. And a few friends were kind enough to say yes. And after every guest lecture, I gave out feedback forums and I said, tell me what you'd like to see repeated. And more importantly, what I should change. And some of the comments were not friendly. I remember one of them said, you're so nervous you're causing us to physically shake in our seats. Much later did I think, wow, I have a form of telekinesis.

Not fun at the time. And then there was a student who wrote that I was so awkward on stage that I reminded them of a Muppet. And they never even told me which Muppet. Maybe you can help me with that.

Matt Abrahams (3:46)

Yeah, I immediately thought of animal, the one who's frenetic and always moving.

Adam Grant (3:51)

I could see that. I was thinking it might be the sweetest chef. But something really interesting happened, Matt, as I went through this. Not only did I stop having mild panic attacks as I repeatedly got in front of audiences, but I also discovered that I had already put myself in the worst case scenario.