Whether you're looking to boost your productivity, find more joy in your work, or simply be more present in the moment, you need flow — and research by Assistant Professor David Melnikoff could help you find it. Melnikoff investigates how we pursue our goals, and how flow — the state of being totally immersed and engaged in what we’re doing — can help us achieve them. According to him, flow isn’t necessarily about enjoying a task or activity for its own sake, but more about the process of discovery that unfolds as we take action in the face of uncertainty. “The source of flow is engaging ..read more

From the way you communicate, to the way build your life and career, Graham Weaver, MBA ’99, says it’s about “giving yourself permission to fully be yourself. You can never go wrong when you’re saying your truth.” Weaver is a lecturer in management, a GSB alum, and the founder and a partner of Alpine Investors. He stresses the importance of direct communication, highlighting how avoiding it can lead to wasted time, energy, and even financial losses. Reflecting on his own experiences in private equity, Weaver admits to struggling with being conflict-averse and not speaking his truth directly, w ..read more

If communication is like painting, words are the primary colors. But to convey deeper meaning, we need a broader color palette, which Dana Carney says requires the mastery of nonverbal communication. We often focus on the words that we say when honing our communication, but according to Carney, there are many instances “where nonverbals start to be more meaningful than verbals.” A professor at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and the George Quist Chair in Business Ethics, Carney researches the nonverbal ways in which we communicate our biases, our preferences, our power, and our status. As C ..read more

Disagreement and conflict may look the same on the surface, but the two concepts are, in fact, very different. According to Julia Minson, knowing how these notions differ is crucial to how you approach them.  In this episode of Think Fast Talk Smart, Minson and strategic communication lecturer Matt Abrahams delve into the intricacies of conflict and disagreement. Minson, an associate professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and Stanford University alumna, also shares her expertise on decision-making and conflict negotiation. Minson emphasizes the need for genuine curiosity ..read more

Why deep connection with others starts by connecting more deeply with ourselves. How are you feeling right now? According to Celine Teoh, we all need to ask ourselves that question more often — and be more precise in how we answer it. Teoh is a facilitator of the course Interpersonal Dynamics, one of Stanford Graduate School of Business’s most iconic classes. In her work with students and as a CEO coach, Teoh encourages people to get better acquainted with their feelings. “Feelings are data,” she says. “In the rest of our logical lives, we would never make decisions on bad or highly abstract d ..read more

Leveraging AI to unlock new levels of creativity and communication innovation Join Matt Abrahams with creativity and innovation experts Jeremy Utley and Kian Gohar to explore the transformative potential of AI in the realms of creativity and problem-solving. If you treat artificial intelligence like an oracle, you’ll likely be disappointed. But if you treat it like a teammate, Utley and Gohar say you’ll be surprised just how helpful a collaborator it can be. Utley, an adjunct professor at the Stanford d.school, and Gohar, a bestselling author, keynote speaker, and futurist, have researched how ..read more

The ways supercommunicators operate and how to emulate their techniques. Across more than 130 episodes, Think Fast, Talk Smart has touched a lot on what it takes to be a good communicator. But what about reaching that next level? What about being a “supercommunicator”? Supercommunicator is a term used by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author Charles Duhigg in his latest book, Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection.  In this podcast episode, Abrahams and Duhigg explore the precise techniques that distinguish a good communicator from a “supercommunicator ..read more

Effective and productive teams and relationships are based on the ability to communicate safely and to fail successfully. In this episode, Amy Edmondson, a professor at Harvard Business School and author of The Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well, shares profound insights on the different types of failure—basic, complex, and intelligent—and their implications for learning and innovation.  In her conversation with host and Strategic Communications lecturer Matt Abrahams, Edmonson opens up about her struggles with failure, highlighting the importance of moving from rumination t ..read more

Why resistance isn’t always a bad thing. Friction — that’s Professor Huggy Rao’s metaphor for the forces that hamper workplace efficiency. But as he says, some friction can be helpful — if you know how to use it. In his book, The Friction Project: How Smart Leaders Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder, Rao and coauthor Robert I. Sutton explore how operational obstacles show up in the workplace and, more importantly, what we can do about them. Through what Rao calls “friction fixing,” leaders can “take out the bad friction to make the right things easy to do [and] put in goo ..read more

“Simple language, forceful language, vivid language, and keeping it simple and direct,” says Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer, are all powerful tools to strengthen your communication. Host and Stanford Graduate School of Business lecturer Matt Abrahams interviews Pfeffer, the author many books, including Power: Why Some People Have It and Others Don't, about the verbal and nonverbal ways we can harness, or give away, our authority when we’re speaking to others. Pfeffer is also the host of the podcast Pfeffer on Power and teaches the Stanford GSB online course Discover the Paths to Power. Think F ..read more