Matt Abrahams

I mean, most tours end up in the gift shop, right?

Your gift to your audience is something they can take away and do something with.

So I think using that analogy, seeing what your job is through that lens can be really helpful.

Yeah.

And I think that's unfortunate when people say you must be better at this.

There are lots of ways to communicate and everybody should find a vehicle in a way that's helpful for them.

There are some roles that require certain types of communication.

And if that isn't something you're comfortable with, maybe you look at a different role.

But I believe we can all learn and develop our communication skills.

I've spent much of my career helping people feel more comfortable and confident speaking in front of others, working on anxiety that goes around it, helping people to see that there are lots of ways to communicate.

Maybe I don't have to hold this object up and make it about me and my object.

Maybe I tell a story about the object or I tell a story about how I came to have the object.

So it's less about me and it's more about the story.

If we can get people to distance themselves sometimes from the fear itself

and get others engaged, it can work really well.

I coached a very senior leader at a very big company everybody's familiar with.

And he was really, really nervous.

And as he got promoted, he had larger and larger audiences.

And what he would do, what we worked on doing is, in essence, distracting the audience right at the beginning.

He would start by saying, let's watch this 30-second video.