194. Live Lessons in Levity and Leadership: Me2We 2025 Part 1
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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 helped 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.edu. 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 people 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 Think Fast, 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 faster smarter dot IO slash live. That's faster smarter dot IO slash live. I look forward to celebrating with you at one or both of these events.

Without further ado, welcome to our live version of Think Fast, Talk Smart. We have four esteemed panelists here, Allison, 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 Allison Kluger. Allison is over there. For those of you who don't know Allison, she is the MBA class of 1978 lecturer in organizational behavior. Like me, Allison teaches strategic communication. She also teaches classes on pivoting and reputation management. And Allison, 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. Thank you. So give us a little sneak peek 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? 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. 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 Allison was one of our very first interviewees. And one of the things that stuck 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.

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 lighthearted and they give supportive advice. And a third captain may be the best liaison between the coaching staff and the athletes and are

coaches achieve by having multiple captains who act as different problem models, they create this pluralism, this culture that accepts contributions of different kinds. And so 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.

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 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 Christian, 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?

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. Yeah.

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, you know, 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

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, stimulus 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.

And so your phone is making you stupid, and it's taking you away from your important relationships. It's making you avoid attending to nonverbal signals, and it's removing your ability to capitalize on what might make a breakthrough idea. And so it all starts with just being willing to endure a little discomfort. And I think all of the skills in the class build on that foundational aspect.

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. 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. 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 a feeling. 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, we'd 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 Ocker 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. 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 Nir 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 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 helped 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.

Give us an example of that. 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.

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? So it's making yourself available. Yeah, absolutely. And open to it. And I think that's wonderful. And I'm trying to budget a little bit of serendipity time as well. So thank you. So I'd like to move to our 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. Yeah, well, from a teaching perspective, I guess AI has 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, you know, 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 teams.

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 materials. So I do some work on political topics. And so if you want to know what some typical arguments, for example, that 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.

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? - Yeah, so in the work that I'm doing with executives in particular, we're thinking a lot about human expansion over human extraction.

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've found from this is that the conversations that I'm now having with my students are

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. - Wow, so it lets you get deeper quicker. - Yeah, absolutely. - Wonderful. Nir, how are you using AI?

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 surprise, 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 things

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. Wow. 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?

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 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. That notion of authenticity, as you said, an 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 AI

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 as 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? 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 the values that we live by and that can turn us into a community, a meaningful community. The P 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 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 the school by changing five organizations in the world. I really like this idea of looking at the problems that we have within our organizations in terms of hierarchy and 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. Great. What's something you're studying and working on? 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 Ocker, 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? - You get the extra credit. - Come on. - Absolutely.

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? 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 dressed beautifully and expensively. 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.

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? 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.

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 to 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

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 insight and their knowledge with us.

Thank you for joining us for this special Me Too We Live recorded episode. Be sure to listen to both episodes for this event. To learn more, please listen to Allison Kluger in episode two, 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 Ibrahams. 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 faster smarter.io for deep dive videos, English language learning content, and our newsletter. Please consider our premium offering. You can find it

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