251. How to Stop Performing and Start Communicating with Presence

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The lessons are short, about 10 minutes, so they fit into busy schedules. And they're designed by more than 200 language experts with tools for listening, speaking, reading, and writing. It adapts to how you learn and helps you track real progress over time. For many of our listeners, whether you're strengthening English skills, adding another language for professional growth, or staying connected globally, it's a practical way to keep moving forward. Babbel has over 25 million subscriptions sold worldwide, offers 14 languages, and every course comes with a 14-day money-back guarantee. If you've ever thought about learning another language, this is a perfect opportunity to start. Right now, Babbel is offering up to 60% off your subscription at babbel.com slash tfts. That's babbel, B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash tfts for up to 60% off. rules and restrictions apply. Effective communication is about presence, not performance. My name's Matt Abrahams, and I teach strategic communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. Today, I'm really excited to speak with my friend, Dr. Kate Mason. Kate is a world champion debater, executive communication coach, and author. She helps senior executives navigate critical and challenging communication situations, along with what she calls the tricky act of communicating while female at work. Her new book is called Powerfully Likeable. Well, welcome, Kate. I am excited to have you here in person. I know the Bay Area used to be your home, and now you live in Australia, which is one of my favorite places. Thanks for being here. Oh, I'm so pleased to be here, Matt. Thanks for having me. Excellent. Shall we get started? Let's do it. All right. Confidence is a big theme in your book and your work. In fact, you have a chapter called Kill Your Confidence. You argue that confidence is a supremely unhelpful concept. As someone who has spent a lot of my life helping people feel more confident in their communication, can you help us understand your thoughts on confidence? I think we're aligned, Matt, on wanting people to be confident. But what I find is the interesting part is when people tell someone else, you've just got to be more confident. And there's a couple of reasons. One, I think it's supremely unactionable feedback. It's the outcome, but not the process. So it's a little bit like telling someone just be healthier or win a gold medal, right? It sounds good in theory, but like, how do I get there? And the process is so different for all of us that it's not about following a listicle or three steps to, it's nuanced and it requires some thought. So that's one of the reasons. I think the more important reason is that when we tell someone to be more confident, we actually get them out of their surroundings and into their head. So we start self-surveilling and being very cognizant of every movement. Like, was that confident? Did I sound confident? Am I looking confident? And what I want people to do is actually get out of their head and into the meeting. So am I being of service? Am I connecting? Am I listening? And that actually ultimately looks confident, but we're not thinking about it as the main driver. So it's not that we don't want people confident, it's we don't want people in their head worried about being confident. So can you share with us how you help people to feel more confident and therefore act more confidently? Yeah. So a lot of it is, I think authenticity is an overused word these days. It's lost its meaning a little bit. But my main philosophy is how do we reduce the delta between your real self and that corporate persona? Because I think the bigger that delta is, the more performative we are at work, especially, the harder it is to communicate effectively and comfortably because it's exhausting, it's draining. But if we can bring that closer to actually who we are and work out what are the things we already have at our disposal? Am I a good rapport builder or a good listener? That's where excellent communication can come from. So that's my mission to make that delta smaller. Sure. And that makes a lot of sense. It sounds to me like people could take an inventory of what works for them, and then try to bring that forward into the situation. And I like what you said earlier, if we approach it as I am in service of these people, or I'm here to add value, that changes the dynamic. It's not I'm here to perform and they are evaluating me. So I like this idea of bringing your true self where you have strengths and seeing yourself as in service of or part of this. And that takes that spotlight off of you. It really does. And no one ever says, thanks so much for that confident meeting. They say, thanks so much for your ideas, for the brainstorm, for listening. So as much as we can invest in those areas, that's actually where the generative stuff happens. It's amazing how much we can do by how we frame our circumstances, especially around confidence. And if we lean into our strengths, we can go in feeling more comfortable and confident. So thank you for that. In a related way, you spend time discussing imposing syndrome, not imposter syndrome. What is imposing syndrome and how does it show up in communication and what can we do about it? Yeah. So imposing syndrome is what I call a series of behaviors where we are afraid to make an imposition on someone else. And it usually shows up when we're asking for time or for resources or for someone's energy on something. And we say things like, it'll just take two seconds, or I'm probably not the expert, or I'm sure you've already thought about this, right? We're so reluctant to cause a fuss or to ruffle feathers that before we've even actually got to the ask, kind of taken our legs out from under us in doing so. And what it actually does in practice is it diminishes the ask itself. I assume that me taking two seconds of your time is not to show you something very important. And by extension, it minimizes ourselves that maybe we aren't worthy of taking up your time. And so one of the things I work with, particularly folks I coach is let's think about what is pushing that resistance when you're making the ask. And let's think about, again, reframing that ask in a way that's just more comfortable. Like, Matt, I'm going to put 30 minutes in with you next week to talk about XYZ. Let me know if that works for you. It's the same ask, but it's a very different mindset with which we approach it. So what we do is we hedge when we afraid that we are going to impose and therefore we come at it with less strength less power And we devalue potentially in the eyes of the person or people who want to meet with the value of what it is we talking about Are there ways that you coach people to become aware of themselves doing this This to me strikes me as just very habitual, especially when you might be new to an organization or focusing on something that's a new topic to yourself. How can we be alert to the fact that we are actually a victim of imposing syndrome. Yeah. Part of it is listening. When I'm with a client, I will notice and reflect back. But part of it is also, you spoke earlier about taking an inventory. I really encourage that. Where did you feel great today in your communication, right? Was there a meeting that you walked out of and thought that went so well, you know, it landed exactly as I wanted. And were there other moments where you felt reticence or resistance? Take note of those too, because they're very instructive to tell us, ah, I noticed, you know, there was a power imbalance in that room and I felt smaller or more junior and I found myself shrinking or disclaiming or hedging. That can just be a good first step, just mapping the terrain to then decide, are those things serving me? And maybe do I want to change them, experiment with them, or maybe I want to keep them as is as well. I am a huge fan and advocate for reflection like that. Many of us are just so glad to have survived or gotten through whatever that gauntlet of communication was that we don't turn around and reflect. And I love what you said about not just reflecting on what went well, but look at what didn't go so well. And are there patterns and behaviors that you're invoking or perhaps not that you want to work on? So it's not enough just to complete the task. It's valuable to go back. I like to tell my students, there's that definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. And that's how many of us communicate. So I really like this idea of reflecting on the activities and the communication you have. Thank you for that. I do want to know a little bit about your thoughts on imposter syndrome because many people I know, myself included, certainly have moments where I feel like I am an imposter in this room or compared to others. How do you see that play out and what do you advise people to do to manage some of that? My thoughts on imposter syndrome are that all of the wrong people have it. I would love to have a global redistribution system whereby why everyone who feels like they have it could just mentally donate it to somebody else. To my mind, the word imposter always invoked some sort of deception. And I always ask people, do you feel that you are trying to intentionally deceive anybody? The answer is usually no, of course not. I just feel like I'm new or I'm inexperienced. And so the answer is you might be new or inexperienced. And that's okay. In fact, that's entirely reasonable and normal. And it's maybe not all on you. Maybe the institution hasn't been as welcoming and there's a lot of great research out there around the institutions needing to also shift to accommodate folks to feel more welcome. So I think when we, again, get into our head about it, it's easy and seductive to stay there and self-flagellate about it. But a nicer way to think about it is if I am self-aware enough that I am experiencing this feeling, I'm probably doing a great job. So maybe just put it down and get to the work and you'll start feeling a lot better. What a really cool tool. If I am feeling like I don't fit or I'm feeling like I'm an imposter, the fact that you are having that feeling probably signals that you're not because you're self-aware. And what I often will coach and what I try to remind myself is that often in these situations, I was invited or there was an expectation that there was value that I would bring. And reminding myself of that helps dampen down some of those feelings. So thank you for that. I really like this idea of redistributing those who feel the imposter syndrome. You write about the tension between being agreeable and being assertive. Can you define what those concepts are and why they're tricky, especially for women? So as I came into leadership myself, I always felt that there were really only two options. And I thought of them as you could be powerful, you know, high authority, no friends, and you could be likable, low authority and lots of friends. And I always thought that was a really unfair binary, right? It didn't seem accurate and it also didn't seem particularly fair. And I think that's exactly that assertive versus agreeable tension a lot of us, particularly women feel, although some men feel too, which is how do I strike this balance? That chasm feels really difficult to navigate. I think about those two things as not ends of a binary, but of as actual partners or neighbours. So instead of feeling like there's this one-way choice or only one of those doors to take. Actually, it's often in the counterintuitive couplings of words or language that might feel dissonant, but actually can be very generative when we bring it together. So I talk to people about what interesting counterintuitive things might you identify with and what leadership style or communication style can we bring out of that? So I hear fantastic things like I'm competitively calm, right? Or I'm ambitiously communal or I'm powerfully likable. These interesting neighbors or friends that actually often, particularly women who may not see their communication style at top levels of leadership can feel like, no, wait, that's exactly who I am. I'm ambitious because I want the best, but I'm communal because I want my whole team to succeed. So I think part of this is about giving ourselves and others language to inhabit and be able to summon that self in our communication. I like that you are saying these are not binary, that there's a way to blend them together. I envisioned as you were talking about the yin yang symbol where they feed into each other. And I really like that activity of thinking about different parts of your personality and put them together and really think about how you show up in that duality, right? In that tension. And as you were speaking, I'm thinking, I am communally curious, you know, because curiosity can often be very self-centered or selfish, but I really believe that I am communally curious. And I love that idea. So once somebody has identified that, do you help them see the next step of how do you embody that? How do you be that? Yeah. So I have an exercise in the book, actually, which goes through that. But yes, exactly right. It's about thinking instead of this performative professional self that we sort of envisage, right? High heels, briefcase, suit. What are those words doing for us? What do they activate in us? Is it that I'm really good at relationship building or very good at detecting how to manage my team and seeing the feelings in them or whatever it might be, we understand what that is. And then I work on practices of essentially working, how could I summon that person, if you like, which sounds a little woo-woo, but how do I bring them to the fore when I'm going to write an email? What does an email from a communally curious person look like? And oftentimes that's the unlock people need to be like, oh gosh, I don't need to be sitting here worrying about the number of exclamation points or how many times I've said thank you or sorry, all these things that I think we get caught up on. I more quickly go to that self-talking, which is usually a much easier way to foreground them or bring them into being. So I find some of the coaching is just like, let's work on bringing them to the fore, because if they're real parts of you, they're there already. I think of it as like an uncovering rather than a totally building from scratch I hear in that both a recognition of what there and then giving yourself permission to bring that part of you forward If you were to go to an AI tool and say write an email in the tone of this or with this approach, it would do that. And what you're actually saying is just do that with yourself. Be a better prompt engineer of your own self. And while, you know, I say that with tongue in cheek, I think there's power in that it really invites us to pull forward who we are and to worry less about who we think others want us to be or we should be. Yes, that's really key, especially I think in corporate or work contexts where there's enough surveillance and self-surveillance going on without us always bringing that attention there. So it counters that quite nicely. I think you're exactly right. And what I found in my own life is when you do bring out that true part of your personality and you communicate in that way, others feel more comfortable bringing out their own. And all of a sudden, you have this authenticity party that you might not always get. And so it can help you, but it might also help your group, your team, your organization. I really like that idea of combining disparate parts. So thank you for sharing that. As you well know, and you and I have talked about this often in our other types of communication, that communication isn't just about what we say, but how we say it. In fact, sometimes our nonverbal presence, what you do with your body and your voice, is more important than what you say. What advice and guidance do you have around how we say what we say that can help us feel more confident, more powerful, more belonging in our environments? It's such a beautiful question. I have a lot of people who come to me and say, I need to be more warm or I need to be more, insert your new adjective here. And I say, I'm not going to help you be more warm if that's not what's coming naturally to you. What I am going to help you is work out the thing you're already doing, the thing you're already saying. So let's work out how to make that comfortable for people around you. So a good example, maybe to help illustrate, work with a woman who she would call her language pretty transactional. She goes into kind of an abrupt action mode, right? She's very incisive. She goes straight to the point. And she came to me saying, I really need to be more warm because I've had this feedback that I'm not friendly or I'm not approachable. And I thought the last thing I want to do is make this woman step outside and be very performative when it just wasn't in her natural vibe from having met with her. And so I said, a tool here you could use, which I think a lot of people could use in different situations, is to just call it out. So she could say something like, if she was here, Matt, I tend to go straight to action mode and just get into the details. Forgive me if that feels blunt, but I really want us to get into this and get you to a good place. Suddenly, she's given both a self-permission to do what she was going to do, to inhabit that place that feels comfortable. But she's also opened a doorway for her interlocutors to feel like, oh, thank goodness, you know, she doesn't hate me. or I understand the scaffolding around that type of communication. And you could do that, say, with a resting concentrating face, which some of us have, right? We have a flat affect and the other person thinks, oh no, like they must hate this idea or something. And you could say, look, I tend to have a resting concentrating face. I'm really concentrating hard and I want to make sure I'm taking in all the details. So let me do that and then I'm good to go. I also like that you're signaling self-awareness, concern for the other person, which buys you a lot in terms of credibility and connection. Thinking about that preamble, it needs to be short and sweet, I think, because you could go on too long, but I do think that it could be helpful to prepare people. I often use the analogy of, as a communicator, you're like a tour guide. Part of what a good tour guide does is always sets expectations so that the people on the tour can relax and just enjoy it. And what you're suggesting is very similar. You come in and preview what's going to happen in the interaction. I like that idea. Have you noticed certain behaviors, physical behaviors or way people use their voice that actually works against them in terms of demonstrating warmth, connection, presence, anything that you've seen that you might call out and maybe give advice to avoid? I think the crossed arms is always one that I do see a lot. And of course, it looks defensive, right, straight away. And I have people say to me, it's just comfortable, but it looks like you're bracing for impact or pushing away. That is one I noticed your arms can be, if you just move them down, it can signal quite a big optical shift. That's one of the ones I find is maybe the most impactful in terms of demonstrating optically openness. It is slightly performative because I am saying, do something different with your body, but the impact of it is so helpful and so revelatory that I think it's worth it. Absolutely. And I appreciate the desire not to give direct performative advice because it's not about the performance, but anytime you can be open, signals a connection and a willingness to connect. Many people gesture right in front of their chest, which is a closed way. If you just gesture a little more broadly, you're more open and being open is helpful. Now, I know before you got into the communication coaching that you do, and you are an expert at that. You used to do executive communication work within firms, big impactful firms that we all know and use their products of. What insights did you glean that can help all of us when it comes to defining a message or cascading a message internally or keeping it tight and clear? Give us sort of the lessons Kate learned when you were doing executive comms for really important companies. Gosh, so many. I think the most surprising one may be because these are big machines that have a lot of spokespeople and a lot of cogs in the machine. I think one of our VPs at one of those companies used to say, repetition never spoils the prayer. And I always love that because it feels like as smart, interesting people, each time we need to reinvent the wheel, each interview we do, or each time we're talking in front of an all hands or a town hall, we must construct this fabulous new set of metaphors or arguments. And actually, all of the research, as you will know, points to the opposite, that people take many times to hear the same thing, to really absorb it many times, even in different ways or different channels, different metaphors, but really the same message. That was interesting to me because I came in thinking I need new talking points and a whole new messaging deck. And actually it was the same deck and the same points and really letting down your intellectual curiosity for a moment and focusing on, no, this role is actually in the purpose or in the service of education. And that comes with a degree of repetition. But I can't impart that enough with people because sometimes the chaotic messaging you see in companies is actually coming from probably well-intentioned folks wanting to tell you everything they know as distinct from deciding on a couple of key themes or ideas and really going hard on those. So having a clear focus, critical themes and ideas, and then being consistent and repetitive are critical. And I love the quote about repetition doesn't spoil the prayer. I'm going to leverage that in what I do. Because not only is it important for the messaging, but it's important for the messengers to understand because it can feel like I'm saying the same thing over and over again. But in fact, not everybody is hearing it over and over again. So that repetition is really important. And the real skill set is to look excited about it. And like it's the first time you've ever said it every time you say it. And there's a way to do that authentically. I don't want people to hear that advice. It's not being disingenuous. It's reminding yourself what's important and what's the value. You know, as a teacher I teach a lot of the same concepts repeatedly but I am so passionate about what those concepts do for people And it be interesting to see what my students think that I bring that intensity So you right It is about repetition but really owning that We be right back to finish our conversation But first, we're going to take a quick break for a message from our sponsors. These sponsorships support the cost of making our show, allowing us to bring it to you free of charge. Hi, Matt here. Career coaching often comes through our workplaces, which can be a great starting point. But sometimes you want space to focus on your priorities, not your organization's. That's where strawberry.me comes in. It's career coaching you choose for yourself. You answer a few quick questions, get matched with a vetted coach, and in many cases, you can start within 24 hours. You choose the coach, you decide the goal, and you get to talk honestly about what actually matters, whether that's a promotion, a pivot, burnout, or even leaving. There's no HR involved, no performance review lens. and if it's not the right fit, you can switch coaches. What I appreciate is the sense of agency. When you're feeling stuck, waiting rarely helps. If you've been thinking something needs to change, you don't need permission to explore that. Go to strawberry.me slash TFTS. It's coaching focused on you. Think of it as therapy for your career. Before we end, I like to ask people three questions. One I make up just for you, and two I've been asking everybody for as long as this show's been on the air. Are you up for that? I'd love to. Well, you know I love very practical, tactical tools, and you've been traveling all around in support of your new book, providing practical, tactical tools for people. Can you share one that you found resonates really well with people? I think one that's really easy to implement now is many of us over-prepare. Maybe that's got us to where we are, right? Maybe that's how we started our career. But I see a real difference between adequate preparation and over-preparation. The dangers of that are so many because we get mired to the thing we've done and we're not as creative or agile in an interaction as we otherwise could be. So my challenge could be, could you do 5% less, just 5% less on a presentation or a meeting prep for yourself and maybe ratchet down those expectations and see how you go. I'd be very surprised if you weren't going to keep ratcheting it down because there's a lot of muscle memory there that we can rely on. And actually, often we do much better work when we're slightly even underprepared, just slightly, than 5% overprepared. There's a wonderful saying in improvisation, good enough is great. When you give yourself permission to be more present, not over-rehearsed, there's an aliveness and a focus that comes. I really appreciate that idea. Preparation is key, but not necessarily over-preparation. Question number two, who is a communicator that you admire and why? I love Michelle Obama. I think she just, I don't know her personally, but it feels to me at least that she is who she is. And she manages to convey so many different forms of authority, warmth, intelligence, community building and rapport. I think she's an exemplar of someone who can very easily ratchet up and down to different audiences, but maintain a very solid sense of who she is. I find that very admirable. There is a connective feeling that you get when she speaks. You feel like you know her. Regardless of if you support her politics or not, you definitely feel that she's there in the moment speaking with you. Final question. What are the first three ingredients that go into a successful communication recipe? I think for me, they are rapport building as number one, great listening as number two, and humility as number three. And humility, I mean the ability to see maybe where you might be wrong and change and course correct accordingly. I think those three things when in place can be a really beautiful mixture that gives creativity and agility in the moment, but also some solidity to yourself and who you are. And I see how they feed into each other, that listening builds rapport, humility continues a conversation going. Do you have one quick tip for building rapport? Is there something that you like to do to help connect? When I'm building rapport, I usually look for, is there a personal anecdote we can bond over or maybe even make a joke with someone, something that gets them out of any performative state they might feel that they're in and de-escalate together so we can both be a little bit more regulated for the conversation ahead. So it's a way of connecting and taking some of the pressure off. Kate, this has been fantastic. I knew we were going to have a great conversation. We always have a great time when we get together. Thank you for sharing ways that we can get out of that performative state and be more real and give ourselves permission to be who we are. I wish you well with your new book, Powerfully Likable. And thank you for joining us. Thank you so much for having me, Matt. It was a pleasure. Thank you for joining us for another episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. To learn more about communication, status, and power? Listen to episode 176 with Alison Fregale. 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