Stanford Professor: Why 85% of People Freeze Up while speaking and 15% might be Lying!

0:00Up to 85 % of people say they feel nervous in high-stakes situations. And quite frankly, I think the other 15 % are lying. You know, at the end of the day, there are three major reasons people get nervous. And by the way, those of us who study it believe this is built into being human. We see it in every culture. And we see it develop at a very specific time in kids' development. When kids go from childhood into early tween years, anxiety about speaking in front of others spikes. And it stays high ever since then.

0:31What would happen if we just told the truth? Welcome to TruthWorks, where we dig into the nitty-gritty of leadership and work. And what needs to change. I'm Jessica Neal. And I'm Patti McCord. Our journey together started in HR, but trust us, it's evolved into something wild, honest, and well, a bit rebellious. So throw out the handbook. We're here to redefine rules to work for us, not against us. Let's dive into another episode.

1:09Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of TruthWorks. I'm Jessica Neal, your host, and I'm here with my fellow co-host, Jeff Markowitz. Hi, Jeff. Hello. How are you doing? I'm great. How's it going today? You're good? I'm great. More importantly than how you're doing, Jeff, is how our guest is doing. We have a guest here today, and I'm very excited to introduce you all to him. He is the author of Think Faster, Talk Smarter. It's a bestseller that probably many of you have read. He also has a podcast, which many of you have probably listened to, and if you haven't, you need to listen to it.

1:47Nat, welcome to the show. Tell us about the podcast really quick because we need to hear about it. By the way, I've listened and it's fantabulous. Well, thank you. J &J, I love it, Jessica and Jeff. I am thrilled to be here with you. Yes, I've been hosting Think Fast, Talk Smart for a while now, and it's all about communication skills. So our goal is to help people hone and develop their skills. Our episodes are short, 20 minutes long, and the goal is at the end of each episode, people leave with two or three things they can implement right away. Communication is critical, as I know you would both agree, to success in both our personal and professional lives.

2:23And we're here to try to help people to enhance and further develop those skills. Yeah. Well, I'm really excited to kind of get into it and unpack a lot of things with you because I think in my career, I have grown to appreciate how much communication impacts and fuels businesses and can be a determining factor in success or not success. So I want to get into that. But we always like to go back in time a little bit on this podcast. I want to know how this all happened. How did you get into researching this, studying this, like what led you to communication as your mission? I'm going to take you back all the way to when I was a young boy.

3:13Okay. So I am the son of a elementary school teacher and a lawyer. So you can imagine that at our dinner table, our conversations were often around communication. My mother was always thinking, how can I make this idea I have to teach engaging, help the students learn? And my father was always very much, how do we make this clear, concise, organized, and structured. So I just grew up in an environment where communication was important, and we talked about it a lot. When I got to university, I thought I was going to be a doctor, and then I met organic chemistry and calculus, and they both told me that perhaps not the right approach.

3:48And at the time, I was an undergraduate at Stanford, and they had this new program, that's how old I am, it's well-established now, called human biology, which was a combination of biology and the social sciences. And I thought, oh, this is a way to get into medicine and not have to do all the hard stuff that I'm not very good at. In the very first class, they brought in a psychologist and he came in and I was mesmerized and I found this is what I need to study. So I immediately switched my major to psychology and found that what I was most interested in psychology was really communication. I was fascinated by it.

4:18And I started even as an undergrad studying anxiety and communication and how we can get better at it. Went to graduate school, worked in the corporate world for over a decade or so, saw the impact and importance of communication. I ran learning and development for software companies. And then had an opportunity to come back to my passion, which is teaching. I adore teaching. I adore learning and teaching communication. I started actually when I left high tech. I taught high school for two years. I learned a tremendous amount as a high school teacher. And then I have graduated to Stanford's Graduate School of Business, where I've been for almost 20 years teaching strategic communication.

4:53Wow. Amazing. So what is it, because you've been doing this for a long time, What is it about the aspect of communication that keeps you on this thread? Is it just that it's so hard for everybody? What is it that you really just are continuing to try to dig down into? So to me, communication is operationalized empathy. It's how we connect with other people. And I'm very fascinated by that. I am passionately driven to make sure we hear people's voices and many people, for whatever reason, feel uncomfortable, feel nervous sharing. And so I'm driven to really help people feel more comfortable and confident in their communication and have explored it both in a planned communication way and spontaneous communication.

5:40And now with technology being so omnipresent in communication, it's just adding a whole new layer. So my curiosity has not waned at all. I am immensely passionate, but it really is to help people connect, to help people share their thoughts and ideas. I firmly believe we are better off when we hear lots of different opinions and ideas. Yeah. And I think you kind of touched on this, but in technology and where things are headed with AI, I happen to believe that the skill of communication is going to increase greatly. And those that communicate really well are going to maybe thrive. And those that aren't are going to struggle a bit.

6:25I 100 % agree. I think AI is making human connection more and more important. Communication is the vehicle for that. The ability to communicate well in an AI world is critical. And AI can absolutely help us communicate better. It can help us better understand those we communicate with. And it can also cause great damage to our relationships. And I'm happy to dig into those. But I've been spending a lot of time thinking about and writing about these very topics. Yeah. How do you think about that, the damaging side of it? Well, so first, you know, I believe there's what I'm calling an authenticity crisis around communication with AI.

7:03AI can allow us to be perfectly polished. Our words and grammar can be nearly perfect. and yet it's not ours. And so a lot of what we need to do is demonstrate our authenticity in our communication. And I'll give you a very practical example. For a long time, I coached a lot of people to be as polished as possible in their communication. And my advice now is to lighten up on that a little bit. Be human. If you stumble or have a foible, if you hedge a little bit, if you have a filler word here or there, that's how we know you're human. So part of it has to do with that authenticity. And then the other big thing that I'm very concerned about is what I'm calling the empathy paradox.

7:44As I alluded to, AI can help us to be much more empathetic. I can say, I'm meeting with Jessica. I know what Jessica does. I know the type of thing. I've seen her writing. I've listened to her podcast. I can have AI help me tailor my messages to really resonate with Jessica, which is great. It's helping me. It's helping my EQ. But if I, on the other hand, outsource all of my really challenging, difficult conversations to AI, if I have to retrench somebody, if I have to give a negative performance review and I have AI do it, you know, empathy is a muscle. You have to build it. You have to work it.

8:17And if I outsource all that, I end up with an empathy atrophy and that can be really dangerous. So, you know, we, and, and what I worry about the most, and I'll stop talking, you've got me on my soapbox. I worry about young children. I worry about teens and tweens who've never had the alternative, right? This is just the way they do it. And that empathy really concerns me. So, yeah, there's a lot to think about with AI. Again, I don't think it's all bad. I think there's a lot of good that comes from it. I see it in my own life and the life of my students and the people I coach, but I am worried.

8:51I have a question for you. Yeah. Shifting gears from the AI, I was just talking with somebody about this the other day. You know, I did a talk when I was at Greylock the first time, and I did this talk a few different times. It's on YouTube. But I followed a guy named Glenn Kelman, who is the CEO of Redfin. Glenn is a tremendously gifted speaker, like beyond, like, I don't know how he does it. And then there's me, who's definitely not a tremendously gifted speaker. And I wonder, like, in the personality dynamic that you've studied of people, what's the difference between the two? So I firmly believe that we can all learn to be better speakers.

9:40There are people who, for whatever reason, have in their life experience or maybe just the genetic personality they ended up with, have a slight or a head in the race just a little bit. Being extroverted, being open to novel experience, these personality traits can help you be more engaging. Being risk-seeking, risk-taking can help. So there are differences, but I wouldn't do what I do and have done it for as long as I have if I didn't believe that we can all learn to improve. There are skills that you can invoke that will help. Maybe you'll never reach his level, but you certainly can become more engaging.

10:17And it's just like any skill. You just have to practice it, work on it, and have a good guide. I tell people there are only three ways to get good at communication. Repetition, reflection, and feedback. You got to do the reps. Nobody ever got good by just thinking about it. You have to reflect. And this is beyond, sorry, this is beyond a presentation. This is a life skill. Absolutely. Absolutely. 100 percent. And the goal is to be authentic and true. You should feel like the same person to people when they hear you one on one, have a conversation, when you lead a meeting, when you give a presentation.

10:49And so these skills are fundamental to us and we can work on all of them. Yeah. I, you know, I just think back on my career and as I progressed, you know, the, I was always really good in a meeting, right? I was always very good at like leading a meeting, but then it was like, okay, now you have to present to the whole company and then, you know, thousands of people. and I never got nervous in a big meeting. And I would have meetings with hundreds and hundreds of people across the world. And that didn't make me nervous. But then presenting like a, you know, kind of like a inspirational thing, right?

11:31I would literally have panic attacks, like, you know, before getting, because, and I think it was maybe the combination of like being on a stage and the lights on you and it's more formal. But also I felt enormous amount of pressure to be inspiring. And I was like, I think it's inspiring, but I don't know if they're going to think it's inspiring. And I would practice so much that when I got up there, I would literally have like an out-of-body experience. Like I didn't even know I was on stage. And then I was like, and my, you know, the like amount of sweat coming, coming off of me. And I remember one time I was like, I kind of like paused and I kind of missed my flow.

12:18And I was like, everybody, I, I'm just sweating so much. And I think it was like the favorite talk that I gave to people because maybe because I told them I was sweating. I don't know. But because it humanized me maybe. But, but it was terrifying. And I the only way I could get through the terror was practice. And I could literally say it with my eyes closed. So what you're recounting is the anxiety that most people feel. Up to 85 percent of people say they feel nervous in high stakes situations. And quite frankly, I think the other 15 percent are lying. A lot of my initial career was spent studying anxiety around speaking and how we can manage it.

12:57My first book is called Speaking Up Without Freaking Out, and it's all about how to work on those techniques. And what you're describing is very real, those physiological symptoms. You know, at the end of the day, there are three major reasons people get nervous. And by the way, those of us who study it believe this is built into being human. We see it in every culture, and we see it develop at a very specific time in kids' development. When kids go from childhood into early tween years, anxiety about speaking in front of others spikes and it stays high ever since then. But that doesn't mean we can't manage it.

13:28Well, if you want the evolutionary explanation, it's very simple. You know, when our species was evolving, we would hang out in groups of about 150 people. That was our tribe. And your relative status in that group meant everything. If you had higher status, you got access to resources, food, shelter, reproduction. If you had low status, literally life and death for you. And anything you would do that would risk that status, like speaking up in front of people and potentially making a mistake, would jeopardize your status. And that was that was something that was life threatening. Yeah. So we believe it's part of us.

14:03But that said, you can learn to manage it just like any phobia that we have. Our anxiety is initiated by three primary sources, and you highlighted one for sure. It's the audience we're speaking in front of. It's the situation, the room, the space, virtual, in person. And it's the goal. And in what I heard you describe, Jessica, the goal of having to be motivational and inspirational caused stress for you. You weren't as stressed when you were informing or leading, but when it was inspiring. And that's goal-based anxiety. And there are certain techniques that one can employ to manage different types of anxiety, goal-based, situation-based or audience-based.

14:39And that's the good news. The not-so-good news is it takes time. It's not a light switch. It's not like you learn one technique and all of a sudden you're amazingly confident. It takes time. But over time, you can learn to become more comfortable and confident. That's why in my strategic communication classes at the business school at Stanford, the very first thing we talk about is confidence. And students create an anxiety management plan that throughout the quarter, they're testing and honing. So when they matriculate from the class, they have something they can use. It takes time. But with it, you can become more confident.

15:10Where were you when I needed you? I was in a classroom somewhere. I'm older than you. I'm sure I was in a classroom. Anxiety management plan for sure. How do you give people the tools to do the reps? Yeah. So one, it's helping them. I do this in several ways. So I coach lots of people. And I will often ask people to share with me another skill that they've developed. Sometimes it's a musician, an athlete, somebody who's great at painting, whatever. And I'll say, how did you get better? And they will all say, hey, I practiced. I had a good coach. And it's the same thing. So helping people see that it's a skill.

15:46We somehow we feel like we were born being able to talk or most of us are, and therefore we should be able to do it well. And that's not the case. You have to put in the rep. So one, helping people see that that good things come when you put in the work to helping people see very specific, small chunk steps that you take. It can be very daunting to say, I want to do a TED talk or speak at Davos. And, you know, that's a big thing. But if you just say, hey, in the next meeting at work, I want to speak up and assert a position. And if we take those incremental steps, it can make a big difference.

16:19So helping people chunk it into reasonable steps, helping them understand that they have worked hard in other areas of their lives, and this is more of the same, and helping them reflect on the successes that they've had. We tend to focus on all the failures when it comes to communication and the things we could have done better. And it can be very inspirational and motivating to reflect on, hey, when I did that, this got better and that led to this. So helping people focus on the positive as well. But it takes time, Jeff, and it is an approach mindset piece. I wonder, I've thought about this a number of times, and it relates to a comment that we mentioned earlier.

16:57It's not a skill that's taught to kids in grade school. And if you look at the persistence of AI and the need for, I mean, even just social media and the need for kids, teenagers, my kids are 23 and 26, just need to develop communication skills as a differentiator, which I think it is. Absolutely. How does this become more of mainstream learning as opposed to something that somebody says you need to learn how to communicate better? So go find a consultant to help you. Yeah, get that. Well, I do like that part of it. So, Jeff, I 100 % agree that this is something that we should be teaching in schools.

17:46I am heartened that it is somewhat changing. So my children are around your children's age, slightly younger. it was certainly devoid from their education. It was devoid from mine. I have a young nephew, and he's nine, and they are doing much more collaborative work than we ever did, my kids ever did. They are getting more instruction and information. So I am heartened to see that some of this is taking hold. Is it going to fix the problem? I don't think so. But the other thing, it's not just at school. It's those of us in positions of authority, be it parents, be it, you know, bosses, managers, we need to role model effective communication and we need to highlight it.

18:24So I would love if everybody listening, if you were in a position where you run a meeting at the end of every meeting, dedicate the last minute or two of the meeting to reflecting on the quality of the communication of the meeting. I'm not saying rehash things. I'm saying, hey, Jessica, that was really great when you paraphrased what Jeff said. It really brought us back on track. Or Jeff, I really liked how your slides had a few images and not just bullet points. Just that kind of feedback puts the focus on communication. It sends a message. When you interview people for jobs or do performance reviews, communication should be part of it.

18:55What's working in your communication? What can we do to help? That kind of thing inculcates a culture of communication, a focus on it. And people are motivated by what they know others are paying attention to. So I do think education has to do with it. We have to do something in our schools. But we as people in positions of authority need to be role modeling and encouraging it. Yeah, no, I agree. But you brought up work, so I'm going to go to work. And, you know, I now that I am no longer at Netflix, I advise and work with a lot of companies. I'm on the VC side. But and one of the things I learned at Netflix was that when we were really clear and communicating really well, things went much better for us.

19:37And so we learned over time to get really, really good at communication. We dedicated a lot of time to the art of it, right? And doing it and practicing it. And we practice it in all kinds of ways. But I go and I go out in the world and advising companies that are public to private and small to big. And communication is a plague in these organizations. Like it is, I would say one of the number one things holding them back from being great. It's just people aren't communicating at all, whether it's they're giving employees feedback, whether it's like people understand the goals, whether they're talking about the conflicts and the tensions.

20:19You know, I was just talking to a woman that I coach earlier today and she works with the founder and he's a man of not many words. And it's like, I agree. And I was like, that's all she gets. She's like, how do I get more? We talked about how to get more. But why is communication, I mean, I understand that communication is hard for everyone, but at work it seems to be even harder. I think there are many reasons for it. One, to Jeff's point, we just aren't trained in it, right? It's not something that people get regular training on. Two, it is often seen as a necessary evil. It's like the last thing people think about, you know, when you're forming strategy, then one of the last things people do is, oh, how are we going to communicate?

20:59I mean, I teach strategic communication. I think communication is where you start, but it's the prioritization of it. And again, it's the focus, where you put focus. As you found in your time at Netflix, when you put focus on it, it can help. You know, an effective communication plan, having bench strength, the people you're confident in who can get up and represent the company message, can pitch, can sell. All of that boils down to communication. I am often brought in as a consultant when things have gone terribly awry and it's fix it. And what I love working with startups and founders is you can build what I call a communication infrastructure.

21:35And that's not just technology. That's processes, people, ways of approaching it that can not only help you manage effectively, it can put you light years ahead of your competition if you're communicating well. It's hard because people just don't focus on it. And that's the real challenge. It doesn't bring in money right away. It doesn't bring products or services to market right away. Yet it is the vehicle through which all that happens. And it's very easy. You know, we don't invest as much as we should in roads and bridges, but that's how we get information with people. It's the same thing. If we invested time and put a priority on it, it would make a big difference.

22:12Yeah. How much, if you look back at sort of the age where, you know, when you're young, you probably communicate pretty freely and you don't really think about consequences, but then all of a sudden you get a little older and a little bit more self-aware. And I think about tough conversations or conversations that I don't think I'm doing well. And the psychology plays in. So I start to worry about what the other person might be receiving. And so it becomes a blocker. How much of learning to communicate well is the skill sets or the reps versus the psychology of not worrying about what the other person's thinking?

23:00Yeah. So to me, communication is about two things. It's about mindset and messaging, and you really can't separate those two. So you do have to go in with an audience-centric, goals-based approach. I have to see it as something that is in service of the person or people I'm talking to. I have to be patient with myself and the other person to listen. Those are the foundational principles, the mindset approach. There is the messaging. You have to get the reps. You have to practice. You have to think about how do I structure what I'm trying to get across in the most effective and efficient way. You can't untangle the two.

23:37When I teach it, I dissect it and we talk about the piece parts. But in fact, it is all together. So the answer to your question is it's both. You have to have that other-centric, empathetic approach. You have to realize that if I'm in service of my audience, it's less about me and what I think about myself, what others think about. It's more about getting the value across to the other. And then it's how do I package the information, structure it, word it in such a way that it's likely to resonate and motivate. So both of those pieces are tied intimately together to be successful. How does it play out in terms of day-to-day communication, not message?

24:15I mean, everything's a message, but in your daily living, day-to-day conversations, how does it play out? That's the ground where the battle is fought, right? I mean, that's how we do it. So when I have a conversation with anybody, my first thought is, what does this person need in this moment? So what is it they need? And that could be emotional. That could be information. I always encourage everybody, yourselves included, to have a goal in your communication. To me, a goal has three parts, information, emotion, and action. What do you want people to know? How do you want them to feel? What do you want them to do as a result?

24:52And when I approach my communication, even a conversation with my kids, my friends, my family, that helps me focus. And there'll be times where I'll dial back on that focus. I just want to shoot the breeze with people. But there's still a goal. And then I'm listening intently Because it is in listening that I best understand Your position, where you're coming from I love paraphrasing I think paraphrasing is really important After you say something I will share what I heard Not in a grand way like what I hear you saying is But I might highlight a few words That not only validates I heard you right But it validates you as a person I've actually listened And then I begin to think about my messaging And all of us can do that in all of our communication The foundational principles of giving a major talk and having an interaction with your chum and buddy are exactly the same.