Elise Keith 0:00 Okay, everybody, welcome. It's exactly the top of the hour. Let's get started. So Elise Keith 0:09 in case there is any confusion about where you are today, we are talking about how to keep groups focused, engaged and on track in your meeting. Now, this is this session is one of 10. This is actually number nine of 10 in our series on the 10, science backed rules for meaningful meetings. And today, I am thrilled, thrilled to be working with Matt Abrahams, who was actually instrumental to helping the team come together and find all of these science back roles. And he is the generous host to introduce me to all of the wonderful people we have featured throughout this series. So Matt, is oh Siri, sheesh, Matt is going Unknown Speaker 1:03 to Elise Keith 1:05 take us away. Today we are going we have 75 minutes to spend together and we are recording, you will receive a copy of this recording after the event, you and everybody else who registered. And let's see, is there anything else logistically we need to cover videos on? mics on when is appropriate and when it's time to engage, and you will have a chance to work together some soon. All right. And with that, I am going to stop talking and turn it over to Matt. Matt. Thank you. Matt Abrahams 1:41 Well, at least Thank you so much. It has been a wonderful pleasure to get to know you and the great work that you do. And I am so thrilled that you were able to be part of our original meeting moonshot. And that's a that's a group that we pulled together from lots of different disciplines. I was representing Stanford's Graduate School of Business where I teach. And we brought in some folks from industry, as well as from the corporate world. And we had a wonderful discussion about ways in which we can make meetings better. And I am thrilled to be here with you today to talk about how can we keep people focused? To begin, I'd like all of you to look at the chat. And I'd love for you to just type in the answer to this one question I put they're very curious. To your answer to that question. If you don't mind. Matt Abrahams 2:30 Something you are looking forward to this weekend would love to hear some of those things or see some of those things. Oh, hiking. Oh, excellent. Peace and quiet. Taking a hike. Oh, happy birthday, very good cycling, cooking. It is so nice to see all of these things out there. It helps distract us from what's going on in the world today. So thank you very much. I would now like you all to click on the participants button that you see on the lower part of your screen. And you'll notice that you can say yes or no, I would love for you to click yes or no to the following question. Have you in the recent past? I'll let you define what that is participated in a meeting where things got off track a little bit things were not as focused as they could have been, perhaps from your end or perhaps from the other participants? The answer is yes, click Yes. If the answer is no, please click No. Oh my goodness, we are We definitely have a big lead for the yeses, at least I see about 18 so far, saying yes to saying no. And I guess that's about 40 people who are still trying to find the participants button or recover from from how awful The meeting was that they attended. So this is a common problem. And this is something that we will be addressing today. So today is all about how do we avoid drip drift? How do we keep groups on track with grace? So we don't want to be seen as a bully. We don't want to be seen as mean, we actually want this to move and work effectively. As you well know when it comes to meetings, the most important thing is getting the folks attending to focus to pay attention. Attention is the most precious commodity we have when we're dealing with any communication but especially in meetings. It's more important than money than Bitcoin than even toilet paper these days. So focus and attention is critical. Yet unfortunately, drift happens people's attention wanes, people get distracted. And this makes it challenging for all of us who are managing meetings and participating in meetings. So I'd like to identify three sources of drift and then we'll talk about ways of managing it. The first source I want to talk about has to do with just going on tangents getting in those rabbit holes, getting distracted. by certain areas or topics or things going on that lose focus on the purpose of the meeting. So one source of drift has to do with tangents, or rabbit holes. Another has to do with people trying to usurp the purpose of the meeting hidden agendas, people just wanting to show that they know more, or that their position is more important. So I label this ego ego gets in the way of a lot of what we're trying to accomplish. And more and more these days, another big source of drift is just fatigue, we have become more virtual, for obvious reasons. But that was a trend that was happening long before COVID came along. I started teaching a class at Stanford's Graduate School of Business on effective virtual communication about five, six years ago before everybody adopted this new way. And fatigue is real. And it's not just virtual, although virtual is definitely salient. It can happen just in in face to face meetings as well. So these are the sources of drift. Not all it's not an include an all inclusive list. But these are some of the major sources. And today, my goal is to help us figure out how to manage these with grace. And we're going to talk about two fundamental approaches, things we can do proactively to reduce the likelihood of drift occurring. And then some things we can do reactively. If it happens, what do we do to get things back on track? So those are the things that we'll be doing. And this is going to be a highly participative session, I'm going to ask you to use the chat a lot, I see people already are making use of that. We're going to take a poll in a moment, we'll be in breakout rooms, I'm even going to show you a video. So I want to hear from you. And I want your expertise as well. I am by no means the expert on this. So since I promised a little bit of engagement here, I would like for you to do the following task, will you please look at the sentence you see on the screen. And I would like for you to read it. And what's more important to me than the message is I want you to count the number of F's, the letter F How many do you find in a moment? I'm going to put up a poll, will you you will respond. So don't blurt it out or write it into the chat, wait for the poll. But I'll give you three or four seconds to read what you see on the slide. And I'm going to ask you to count the number of F's, how many do you find? Matt Abrahams 7:33 Alright, and this poll is coming up. And as soon as you see the poll, I would like for you to just type in the number of F's that you found. Let's see how many we've got going there. Lots of numbers coming up. Excellent. That was very quick. We've got about almost all of you have. Come on in here give you just another three or four seconds for some of the stragglers. Excellent. So I'm going to end the poll here. And you'll notice that we have overwhelmingly 48% people said they found three with the second largest number being six. So let's actually interrogate this a little bit. So you'll see here that if you look at the sentence, there happened to be six F's, six of them, what three, what two letter word occurs three times ending an F that many of us missed. Do you now see of Oh, f? Yes. Many of us miss that. Why do I start every class, every workshop, every teaching situation I have with this activity? Well, I'll tell you the honest truth. 13 years ago, when I first saw this, I found only three F's and I felt really stupid. So I like to pass that fit. No, no, no, no, no, no, that's not why I do this. I do this because this is an exact metaphor or analogy for what we're going to do today. Many of us, myself included, when I first did this, we're not as effective or efficient as we could have been, we missed little things that make a big difference in being effective. And the same thing is true. In our managing of drift in meetings, there are little things that we can do proactively and reactively that can help us manage these systems situations with grace. So today, my goal is to introduce you to some of those and to hear from you about things that work for you so we can be better equipped in the meetings we participate in and run. So the three areas I intend to cover today you see listed before you The first is hygiene and hygiene for me has to do with how we set up meetings and think about them. Then I want to talk about managing expectations. Again, this is a proactive approach. And then I want to conclude by talking about engagement. How do we actually foster engagement when people are engaged there. Matt Abrahams 10:00 less likely to drift off. And I will conclude with the secret sauce, in my opinion for managing drift when it happens. So I'm going to leave that out there as a teaser, just to suggest some things for you. If at any point you have a comment or a question, please type it into the chat. I'm happy to take your questions throughout. However, I will pause it each of the transitions into these new sections. And at least if I could ask if a question comes in while I'm in the midst of speaking, could you just capture that for me and perhaps even interrupt and let me know there's a question that came in. So with that, let's get into hygiene. Matt Abrahams 10:38 From my perspective, hygiene is all the things that we do to set up a meeting in advance and hygiene includes lots of things that we need to be thinking about both virtually and in person. So hygiene to me, represents the sum total of all the things we can think about to help us make our meetings better. So for example, if you are doing organizing an in person meeting, think about the the layout of the room. The way in which the room is set up matters is it set up in a U shape are people at circular tables, Elise was able to bring in Matt chatter if you have not listened to Matt chatter I have the hugest man crush on Matt. Matt is an amazing person runs a whole organization in the UK. And he talks a lot about the use of space. And I know that at least had Matt speak, I was actually part of his session. And he talks a lot about how space matters. And it helps people feel engaged, it helps people feel present, it puts people on the spot sometimes. One of my favorite findings that he came up with is in school, they found that if children who take classes like math, or they tend to get very bored and check out, if you have them sit on stools, or those bouncy balls, they actually pay attention more. So the Environment Matters. And you can actually foster engagement simply through the environment you set up. When it comes to virtual environments, you want to make sure that everybody has a good setup, I'm looking out at all of you who are showing your videos, and many of you are based on what you do are displaying good video protocol, you're showing your video, you're well lit. It's important as human beings, we are wired to pay attention to people's faces. If we can't see you, you're sitting too far away, you don't have good light. It's a problem. So helping people encouraging people to show up with video and well lit, it looks good look at some of your colleagues on if you go into gallery mode. Some of you look really good. Others of you look like you're in the witness protection program where we can barely see your face. And so we want to make sure that we have good lighting, for example, you want to make sure that you're in an environment that's not distracted. So remove distractions, turn your phone's off. I actually am in my home, I have two teenage kids and a wife all are in theory doing work beyond the door, I went out and bought an on air sign so I hang this on the door outside my office, they know not to bother me when they see this. I recently tried to put this up over the weekend. So I could take a nap didn't work. They're too smart. But the point is, I'll look at that the least has one too. So the point is we need to set up the environment for our participants and for ourselves, to help people focus and not be distracted. Now one of the great pleasures I have is teaching at Stanford Business School, I was invited to host a podcast it is a podcast called Think fast talk smart where I interview experts on the Stanford campus about communication. And very recently, I was able to interview a professor at the business school named Baba Shiv. And Baba is a neuroscientist. And he studies lots of fascinating factors. And one of the things that he found in some research he did is that the timing of your meetings matter. And in terms of the what underlies all of this is serotonin. serotonin is a neurochemical, you've probably heard about it. Our serotonin levels vary throughout the day, they are highest in the morning. And what his research has found is when your serotonin levels are highest, we are most likely to take risks and be open to feedback. And so if you are planning a meeting, that is involves brainstorming that involves giving feedback, then planning that meeting in the morning or at least in the morning for most of your participants make sense. You're aligning up with the way our brain is wired to interact. If you have just an update meeting where you're just discussing updates, then perhaps do that later in the afternoon when we are lower in our serotonin levels. Now, this led me to ask him Matt Abrahams 15:00 What do you do if you've got an international meeting or the timing just doesn't work out on people's schedules, and you need to do more interactive based work later in the day when the seratonin cycle is off. And his comment was, then you have to absolutely spend time upfront in the meetings, fostering trust, doing icebreakers, telling jokes, getting people to be more comfortable and activating more serotonin. So I found this fascinating that we are actually wired to be receptive at different times of the day, to different types of interaction. So again, more interactive, feedback based brainstorming based activities tend to work better in the morning when we are more alert, and we tend to have more serotonin going. So again, fascinating research, something that I think we should all think about as we plan our meeting. So in terms of hygiene, it's really important to be thinking about the environment, you've set up the distractions that you have built in and the timing of those interactions. Curious now, if anybody has any questions, comments, or insights into meeting hygiene, that could reduce the likelihood of drift that we might experience? If you do, feel free to type it into the chat. Let me know Angus, I'd love serotonin and dopamine. Yes, the the dynamic duo of our happiness. Matt Abrahams 16:29 And Lily's thank you for sharing some of Dan Pink's research on when we actually should meet. So if there are no questions or comments, thank you, I would like to proceed. And we're going to begin talking about expectations and expectations really drive a lot of what it is we do to help reduce drift. Matt Abrahams 16:55 So we've got some things about noise. The research tells us I'm now seeing comments come in. So before I get to expectations, so Stefan reminds us that noise is an obvious distraction. And there are really three types of noise that we academics look at, there's physical noise, that's when something's just loud. There's psychological noise and things that get in our way in terms of our thinking. So are we judging? Are we evaluating? Are we ahead of the game trying to manage what comes next? And then there's physiological noise? Are we hungry? Are we tired? Are we nervous? And we have to manage all of those types of noise to help us be more present? Matt Abrahams 17:49 So a interesting point, Stephanie makes about tracking to agendas and how that can shut people down. And we can talk about that. Matt Abrahams 17:59 So we'll talk about timing. Yeah, a lot of you are talking about timing issues. Yeah, so Pedram. Great question. What about hygiene from the participant side, I think everything that we're talking about applies to participants as well. So for example, it's important for participants to be well lit to make sure their cameras are on, they have to reduce distractions in their environment. In fact, part of expectation setting in meeting invites I'll talk about in a second, you can give people a list of best practices to help them encourage them to have good hygiene. So so it can be really, really interesting. All right, Elise is gonna send us even more links. I love it. So let's talk more about expectations. So expectations are critical. And as a meeting organizer, or a facilitator, you really need to think about the expectations you're setting. You'll see here in this image that I am sharing, this is a bowling lane. You'll notice in this bowling lane that the gutter is actually blocked, the gutter guard is up, this ball will never miss a pin. And that's because the gutter guard will prevent it from going into the gutter. And this is the only way I can bowl effectively. And much of what we need to do when we set up meetings and run meetings is act as gutter guards, we really need to set our expectations of the participants set direction and make sure that we do some work to establish ground rules for those who are participating. So it is critical to set expectations up front. Now some of these expectations can be co created. And there's a there's some research to say that expectations that are co created actually can help your audience be more willing to follow them. But you need to think about what it is you'd like your audience to do. And when it comes to ground rules. There are really two types there are normative or behavioral ground rules how you want people to behave. And then there's content specific ground rules. So for example, Behavioral ground rules join the meeting. If it's virtual with your camera on in your mics muted Now sometimes the technology allows you to set that up as a default conversation or content ground rules might be things such as make sure whatever you're saying links to one of the topics that we're discussing, make sure that you connect your topic to something that came before. Those are the types of ground rules that you can set. But it's critical to set ground rules because ground rules help keep people focused and when drift occurs, it allows you to plug people back in by saying as according to our ground rules, we need to bring them forward. I believe the most underutilized location for establishing ground rules and setting expectations and like Matt Abrahams 20:51 initially, they don't take full advantage of what you can do with them. Most people just slap a name on to their their invite title. And then they just give the URL to get to the virtual meeting or they just put it in the conference room. You can do so much. Yes, ma'am. Elise Keith 21:07 You cut out for just a second. Can you? Oh Unknown Speaker 21:10 no. Elise Keith 21:11 You said the most important way to set ground rules was Matt Abrahams 21:15 one of the most important ways Yes, I building suspense Elise. One of the most important ways I believe you can set up expectations and ground rules is through the calendar invite most of us use the invite the bare minimum, we need to leverage all of the opportunities that the invite provides for us. Most of us just slap a name in a URL or a conference room location. What you call your meeting helps it sets people's expectations words matter. One of my children is just recently got his driver's license, and he wants to get a car. So we've been looking for used cars, I was shocked to learn that you can no longer buy a used car, you can certainly buy a certified previously owned vehicle. But you cannot buy a used car. A certified previously owned vehicle sounds a lot better than a used car. So it's important to think about wording wording matters. It sets expectations get people it gets people's engagement. Similarly, if you have an agenda, if you have certain ground rules, if you want to tee up certain questions you want people to bring to the meeting, all of that can be put in the calendar invite it sets expected expectations, and it shows people that you care. So it's really important that you spend time thinking about how you want to set those expectations. Part of expectation setting is to get back to the point that was brought up earlier, which was you must make your content relevant for your audience, which means you have to reflect on who your audience is, and what their needs are. Most people start their communication from the wrong place. They start by thinking, here's what I want to say, or here's what I want to have happen in this meeting. Rather, you need to think about what does the audience need, which means you have to do reconnaissance, reflection in research. So you have to start there. And based on that finding those findings, you then craft a goal for your interaction. All high stakes, communications, meetings, presentations, one on one interactions must be goal driven. And to me a goal has three parts information, emotion and action. What do I want people to know? How do I want them to feel and what do I want them to do. And as part of reducing distraction. In part of keeping people focused, I need to make sure that my goal is clearly stated. And I need to make sure that it is relevant to as many people as I can possibly have it relevant to. So these are some of the things we have to think about when we go ahead and set expectations. Now I happen to be a big fan of agendas. You see, I'm using an agenda slide for this presentation. There is some research that says the utility of agendas is far less than we expect. In fact, Joe Allen, Professor Joe Allen, who at least knows and has had a speak, he has some research that says agendas are not as important as we think they are. That said I still think agendas are useful. They're useful tools for organizing and they give you as a facilitator and as a meeting participant anchors in terms of timing and expectations. Matt Abrahams 24:34 So we need to be thinking about how we set people's expectations to behave prior to the meeting. But also in the meeting. I am a huge fan as a professor, that one of the things that students get really nervous about is cold calling and I do not like cold calling. One way I like to set expectations is through what I call warm calling. So another way to set expectations is to let People know in advance of asking and soliciting for their input that you're going to be calling on them. So rather than just blurt out and say, Hey, Adam, what do you think are alley? What are your thoughts on this, rather to warm call them in advance and say in a few minutes, I'm going to be asking for volunteers. I'd love to hear from Adam, I'd love to hear from Ali, that prepares people, especially in a virtual environment where we have no idea of what's going on behind the screen in terms of noise and distraction, it lets people get ready. So setting expectations, not just for the meeting, but for the interaction that happens in the meeting is very critical. In a moment, I'm going to ask Elise to set up some breakout rooms, we're going to create breakout rooms that have five people each. And in these breakout rooms, I want you to think about what you can do to manage expectations in the meetings that you have. So you'll be with four other people. And I'd like for you immediately. Once you join, introduce yourselves get to know each other, I'd like for you to pick a scribe, among the five of you, the scribe is the person who's going to come back in in the chat type in one of the results that you've discussed. So here's what I'm going to ask you to do. In your breakout rooms, I want you to think of three different roles that we have in meetings, we have the meeting organizer, that's the person who puts things on in the case of this interaction we're having right now, at least was the meeting organizer. We then have facilitators, the people who are actually managing the meeting, as it's happening. In this case, I am the meeting facilitator. And you all are serving as participants. And I'd like for each of you to think about what can we do to help organizers, facilitators and participants manage expectations in the moment as the meeting is going on. So for example, as an organizer, you can set up an agenda or you can set up an environment the tools you use and make available to people in Elise did an excellent job of doing that. So that's one example. as a facilitator, you can have ground rules or set expectations for what will unfold as I did earlier, I said, we're going to have three sections at the end of each section, I'll take some questions. And then for participants, there are things that participants can do to help manage expectations. I am a huge fan of low tech when it comes to this. I recently purchased cards that I learned about from one of Elise's meetings. And I'm a big fan of cards, for example, that say things like get to the point, or Elmo enough, let's move on. So as a participant as the meetings going, I can simply put a card like this up to signal how I would like to manage expectations and rules. So these are what I'm looking for, I'd like for you in your groups of five, we'll give you about five minutes to do this activity, about a minute to introduce yourselves to each other. And we'll send out a broadcast message to help you move along. And then I'd like for you to think about each of these three roles and come up with one way at least one way that each of these different roles can help manage expectations of the participants, you will pick a scribe and when we come back, the scribe will write down one of the ways that you all have elected is the best way you believe of what you've all talked about to help manage expectations. So with that, Elise, I'm going to ask you to set up those breakout rooms. If anybody has any questions, please feel free to chime in with the questions. And as Elise did wonderfully, you've got some good advice there. Let's go for it. I'll stop sharing slides. Oh, is there a question? Stefan, did Unknown Speaker 28:42 you have a question before we go? Yeah, yeah. So I just wanted to ask you, so to manage the expectations, as the meeting goes on? Yes. Not before, Matt Abrahams 28:54 but during the meeting. It can be both I'm open to any expectations, what you do before or what you do during? All right, excellent. Let's get into those rooms, please. Thank you so much. Elise Keith 29:05 So for those of you who haven't been into breakout rooms, you will be magically whisked away. Most of you will be in groups of four or five as folks shuffle, shuffle around, and then we will whisk you magically back. So On your mark, get set, go. Matt Abrahams 29:25 They are I love it. It's just like the back. It's just like popcorn people pop back in. Well, first, first and foremost, I hope you were able to meet some really cool people who are doing interesting work that I always love when I join these meetings that at least puts on I always get to meet wonderful folks. One of you asked for the link to these cards and Elise has kindly put that into the chat. Here's what I'd like to do your scribe the person who was nominated to be the scribe, please in the chat, type in one of the expectation management tools That your group discussed. And what I'd like you to do is I'd like you to preview it by typing in which of the three roles it was responsible for. So if it was an organizer, type, organizer, hyphen, and then the specific expectation tool, if it was participant do the same thing. We'll take a moment to let those folks do that. And in the meantime, I'm wondering if anybody would like to share something that you some epiphany you had in talking to some of the other folks. So if you do, you can simply raise your virtual hand. I see several things coming in here now, which is great. Why don't I just jump to read a few of these? So Chris, and his team or her team said use the agenda throughout the meeting as a reference point. Excellent. So anchor yourself to the to the agenda for Bryan, his team clarity of outcome before, during and after the meeting. Excellent. Making sure it's crystal clear what you're striving for. Stephens team Wow, you guys came up with with a lot. facilitate for common understanding, engage everyone limit group size? Yes, there's some interesting research that says a group size really does matter depending on what you're trying to accomplish. For the organizer, facilitator, john says, create a visible parking lot a flip chart whiteboard, where you can put information that's not relevant, very good. We've got Nan says, clarify that pace, pacing is very good. Managing time is one of the difficult things. co creating ground rules as Nancy and her team that's and keep them visible. Very good. Chris, another, Chris says, provide upfront clarity about the purpose and outcomes. Very good. So I'm scrolling through all of these in the neck the next task you have, I will read through these in more detail. And I'll come back with a better summary. But these are really useful. Matt Abrahams 32:00 So there was a question here that said, Could you give more about the study about number and purpose? So when it comes to actual brainstorming, and in decision making smaller actually tends to be better? The question becomes what is small, the you know, these tools, and I've gotten to know all of these tool providers, because I teach that effective virtual communication class of WebEx, zoom, meet all of those folks, they have in their mind that more is better, being able to bring more people together is better. And there are certain contexts where that definitely applies. But when you're doing brainstorming, when you're when you're trying to do some detailed decision making and planning, the more people actually tends not to work, much of the research looks at groups of eight and 12. To find for really effective group size. So something to think about. So the advice I give clients when I'm doing my coaching is, you know, if you are really doing some some detailed planning and brainstorming, it might be best to run multiple meetings with fewer people, rather than trying to have everybody show up at once. So that's something that can can really help. So let's move on now. Thank you so much for talking about expectation setting, really appreciate that. The last of our topics before I get the secret sauce or tool for managing drift, when it actually happens is to think about engagement. How do we engage an audience because quite frankly, if you engage an audience, they're not going to drift as much. So to me, I told you that focus is critical. In meetings attention and focus. What we're talking about in terms of engagement is sustained attention, sustained focus, how do we sustain people's focus and engagement throughout the interaction? in the chat, let's just do some quick meta work here. In the time that we have spent together, we've been together for about 40 minutes, I'd like for you to type into the chat the various ways that I and Elise have tried to keep you engaged and focused, what are some of the things that we have done to keep you engaged? So Susan, very quickly said polls, visuals. Yes. So the slides are very visual polls, group activities, breakout rooms using humor. Thank you. I like that use of chat. Quick Time polls, very good shifting screens, from seeing people to seeing slides. These are all not accidents. These are ways to keep people together. Having a catalog or a stockpile of engagement techniques can help you and I love that you guys are being reflective. And that's very, very useful and helpful. So let me share with you some very specific techniques. But before we do that, we have to get to the fact that research has suggested that we need to change things up frequently. The research suggests that attention lasts for about eight to 10 minutes before it completely wanes and drift occurs. Now that's not saying that people stay until 759. And then it minute eight, boom, they're gone. It's grabbed And people start to drift and and the younger people are the more quick, they more quickly that the drift happens. So we need to be building in these engagement tools. Now the nice thing is, is that the research suggests that the the things you have to do to make the change to draw people's attention doesn't have to be that much. And this is based in research on cognitive load and habituation. People habituate very quickly they get used to it. Our brains are wired for novelty and change. So we need to change things up. But that change again does not have to be that big. So it can be simply asking a question, taking questions, showing a video clip, putting up a provocative slide asking for somebody else to contribute having somebody type into the chat going to the whiteboard. It's not big time work. But you do need to think about how am I going to change things up. So as you plan your meetings, you need to be thinking about it in eight to 10 minute chunks, every eight to 10 minutes, something has to change up. So let's make sure we think about these engagement techniques that we're about to discuss, and how we can drop them in frequently. So when it comes to types of engagement, I'd like to share with you three major categories. There's physical engagement things you do to get people physically engaged, there is cognitive engagement things you do to get people engaged mentally. And then finally, there is linguistic engagement, engagement you use through words. And again, the sole purpose of engagement is to keep people riveted to what you're doing. So they don't drift. So one of the ways we manage drift is to not have it happen by keeping people engaged. So when it comes to physical engagement, let me share with you and you've already identified several of the things because I've been trying to use them. And so his Elise, physical engagement involves getting people to physically do something this can be typing in responses to chat, this could be answering questions. This can be having people watch a video, look at some engaging image, talking to others in breakout rooms. I'm a big fan of putting into the chat, some external document like a wiki or a shared doc like a Google doc and send people there, have them do work and have them come back taking polls. These are all ways of getting people to be physically engaged. Sometimes and I know some of you are practitioners, getting people to stand up or walk around or point to things that's another form of physical engagement. The reality is this if you get people moving or doing something physical, their minds will follow as well their attention. So build in things people can do physically, I've been known to take polls, just thumbs up thumbs down, that gets people doing things physically. Now when it comes to physical engagement, one of the things I want to spend just a moment talking about is showing your video image. Showing your video is great in that it gives you another sense of input you can tell if people are engaged and involved by looking at them. It also builds in distraction, and it builds in distraction at two levels. First, if I am going through complex content, scientific technical content, seeing a speaking head actually distracts. We are wired by evolution to pay attention to people's faces, it is one of the biggest sources of information that we focus on. If we see a face moving and talking and I am trying to show you and explain complex information in person or virtually, it can be very distracting. So you need to think about when you actually show your video. Additionally, showing video has been shown especially when you are looking at so many faces at once. When you're virtual and you see your own image. This can be very taxing on your brain a whole set of neurocircuitry is designed to monitor and measure our own appearance and when we see it constantly, it actually gets very fatiguing and invites distraction. So there is research to say when it comes to showing your video you absolutely should show your video at the beginning of meetings for sure. And at anytime you are doing interactivity if you are brainstorming decision making answering questions, you should show your video because people have a desire to see how you are responding. But if you are going through technical, scientific detailed information actually removing your video might help people focus better. So be thinking about that. We all have this tendency to think that more video is better. And in many situations that's true but in some situations that can actually work against you. So when it comes to physical engagement video is something To think about it as a way of getting people involved. There are lots of other tools chat polling whiteboards, etc. I want now to turn our attention to cognitive engagement, getting people involved, cognitively. And there are lots of ways to do this. There is a wonderful book and this book has been around for a long, long time. It's called Made to Stick It is written by Dan and chip Heath. Matt Abrahams 40:28 Dan Heath runs a nonprofit in San Francisco chip Heath is a fellow professor at the Stanford Business School. they've written a number of books, but it made the stick, they talk about some foundational principles for getting people to pay attention to get their attention to stick. And if attention is sticky, it's not drifting. Let me share with you some ways we can do this. One way of building cognitive engagement is to be very concrete in what it is you were saying specific concrete information draws us in, we pay attention to specifics better than generalities. A lot of neuroscience helps us understand that, that if we focus on specifics, it helps second, vividness describing things showing things in a vivid way our brains are wired to pay attention to vivid descriptive information. Similarly, if you can show imagery, images matter a lot, the way we process verbal information is different from the way we process visual information. And if you can have visual information reinforcing the verbal information, you get parallel processing in neuroscience, they call it the picture superiority effect. I use a simple analogy. That is, it's like loading an airplane, you've all flown at some point, most of us not a lot recently. And you know what it's like to load an airplane from one door, standing in the jetway going in one after the other. That is not the most efficient way to get people in an airplane. If you loaded through the front door in the back door, you get more people in more easily. This is true with your brain. If you've got visual information coming in at the same time as verbal information, you actually get information in there more efficiently, and it sticks longer. So think about being vivid. Think about showing images. Think about being concrete. Building, curiosity is also another way to get people to stay focused. If there's a way of posing your information as questions rather than as declarations. That's a way to get people to focus as well. So we've talked about physical engagement, we've talked about cognitive mental engagement, I'd like to talk about linguistic engagement, language matters. Using inclusive language words like us, you we tend to get people to focus more. since we were kids, we have been told by parents by teachers that when you hear your name or the word you, you should focus more. So are there ways that you can build in inclusive language into what you say. It's not that hard. So instead of at the end of something saying today, I discussed say, today you learned or you might use phrases like as you know, or as you might be wondering, that draws people in. Additionally, leveraging analogies as I did just a few moments ago, talking about loading a plane, really help people focus and get them engaged. Now the trick to analogies and we have a multicultural audience on board today is you have to make sure that the analogy is relevant to everybody you are speaking to. It is often the case that we use analogies that are culturally specific in American business, we repeatedly use sports analogies, we use analogies, like push it across the goal line hit it out of the park, it's a slam dunk, which works really well if you know those sports, and those sports tend to be very American specific. So you must make sure that your audience understands analogies. But Taken together, these tools can really help you keep your audience focused physical engagement, cognitive engagement, linguistic engagement, pull your audience in. Now I'd like to give you an example of this playing out. So I am about to show you a video clip. This is of a TED talk. It is my assumption that many of you are familiar with Ted Talks. This is not a person running a meeting. But I am often asked after I teach these engagement techniques. What do they look like? How does it sound? So I'm just going to show you a very quick two or three minute video clip and I want you to notice the different types of techniques that this presenter uses. And I'm going to ask you to pay attention in a very specific way. If your first name your first name, starts with the letters A through G i want you to be looking for For physical engagement, what does this speaker do as she speaks, to get her audience involved, and I want you to typing it into the chat. If your name, I gotta go through the alphabet, H, E, F, G, A, if you're, if you're a first name starts with H, all the way through, oh, your first name is between ancient Oh, I want you to be looking for cognitive engagement, what does she do to invite the audience in through vivid description through Matt Abrahams 45:32 be concrete, etc. And then finally, if your name first name starts with P, through the end of the alphabet, I want you to look for linguistic things she does in terms of inclusive language and analogies. Okay, so that's what you're looking for, at least you are my hero, thank you for doing that. Let's go ahead. And if these zoom gods are going to be kind to me, let's watch this presentation. Unknown Speaker 46:01 Let's talk about trust. We all know trust is fundamental. But when it comes to trusting people, something profound is happening. Please raise your hand if you have ever been a host or a guest on Airbnb. Wow, that's a lot of you. Who owns Bitcoin. Matt Abrahams 46:27 So keep typing in your responses as she goes, did a lot of you Unknown Speaker 46:30 Okay, and please raise your hand if you've ever used Tinder to help you find a mate. This was really hard to count, because you're kind of going like this. So these are all examples of how technology is creating new mechanisms that are enabling us to trust unknown people, companies and ideas. And yet, at the same time, trust in institutions, banks, governments, and even churches is collapsing. So what's happening here? And who do you trust? Let's start in France, with a platform with a company, I should say, with a rather funny sounding name, blah, blah, car. It's a platform that matches drivers and passengers who want to share long distance journeys together, the average rate taken is 320 kilometers. So it's a good idea to choose your fellow travelers wisely. social profiles, and reviews help people make a choice. You can see if someone's a smoker, you can see what kind of music they like, you can see if they're going to bring their dog along for the ride. But it turns out that the key social identifier is how much you're going to talk in the car. Not a lot, blah, blah, you want a nice bit of chit chat, and blah, blah, blah, you're not going to stop talking the entire way from London to Paris. It's remarkable, right? That this idea works at all, because it's counts the lesson. Most of us were taught as a child never get in a car with a stranger. And yet blahblah car transports more than 4 million people every single month. So put that in context. That's more passengers than the Euro cell, or JetBlue. Airlines carry. blablacar is a beautiful illustration of how technology is enabling millions of people across the world to take a trust. A trust leap happens when we take the risk to do something new or different to the way that we've always done it. Let's try to visualize this together. Okay, I want you to close your eyes. There is a man staring at me with his eyes wide open. I'm on this big red circle. I can see. Okay, so close your eyes. Matt Abrahams 49:02 All right, let's come on back. I hope you enjoyed that. I think she's a very dynamic speaker. But I will I like showing this video as an example of how easily you can put in a wide variety of different engagement techniques. And I was just watching in the in the chat how all of these different techniques were being called out by you. I mean, look at just scroll through the chat and look at all of the different things that she was able to do in a short amount of time, clearly demonstrating physical engagement, mental engagement, cognitive engagement, and linguistic engagement. And it kept you involved, right, it got you interested in involved. So as a meeting participant when you contribute, as a facilitator, as an organizer, think about ways you can leverage these engagement techniques to draw the audience in so that you can be care, you can make sure to reduce the likelihood that drift is actually occurring. So we need to think about the things we can do proactively to help avoid if drift occurs. Now, we have taken the time to talk about hygiene, to talk about expectations and to talk about engagement, before I move to what I believe is, is a wonderful tool for helping if drift happens and giving you an opportunity to practice that. If there are any questions, please feel free to type them into the chat. There was a question that came earlier. And I believe it was from Peter and Peter said something along the lines. So Matt, you mentioned that if you have visual and verbal that is words and pictures on a screen that it actually helps. What about voice to somebody talking on top of that? Does that make it even more distracting? And the answer is, yes, verbal information spoken or written or processed in the same way. So if you have slides, for example, that have lots of information on them, you are actually inviting challenges for your audience, you're causing them to have to multitask in a way that can be fatiguing and invite drift. So you've noticed my slides are purposely devoid of many words, not a lot of words, images that reinforce because the research suggests that's actually easier for people to process. Now I know some of you work in industries or work with people who work in industries where the types of slides I show would be totally inappropriate. So you want to minimize words if there are a lot of words or figures on a screen, stop talking and let people process them that that could help. Let me see if other questions are coming in. storyteller? Yes. So Pedro, storytelling is very important. That is a very strong literature around the value that storytelling actually engages people. Our brains are wired to study and learn story. You've heard of episodic memory, perhaps episodic memory is simply a series of episodes. Our brains are wired to store stories, not bullet points, bullets kill don't kill your audience with bullet points. So it's important. So Cynthia says was mats paste today intentional, I hope my pace has been appropriate. Cynthia, good ICU thumbs up, I tend to speak a little slower, especially when I know I have a diverse audience from different cultures, I can get very excited about what I present and speak quickly. So from my perspective, my pace is deliberate. pacing is important. pausing is important. So that gets to some of the nonverbal things that we can do to keep people up with us. Unknown Speaker 52:45 So let me Matt Abrahams 52:46 now and we'll have time for questions at the end. But I want us to talk about this next topic, so you can actually practice so at least we're going to be doing breakout rooms in a few moments where people will be in pairs if you can help me with that. So we've talked a lot about what you can do proactively. And we've talked a little bit holding up cards and things like that of what you can do in the moment, but when drift happens, to my mind, the single best tool we have at our disposal as facilitators as participants, is the use of a paraphrase. To my mind, a paraphrase is the most effective tool we can use to keep things on track. Now, let me be very clear what I mean by a paraphrase. A paraphrase is where you extract some key meaning or value from what somebody has said. It is not doing what a young child does, and just pare it back what somebody has said, a paraphrase is where you extract the key meaning so you're thinking to yourself as you're listening, the bottom line is or the key point here is, and here's why paraphrasing is so powerful. It is the politest way I know, to get people to stop talking. So when people go off on a tangent either because they don't understand they're not clear on the relevance. Maybe again, back to that ego artistic point of view, they just want to prove they're smarter than you or show that they have value to bring. Paraphrasing, to my mind is the best way to regain control. gracefully bring people back. So it might look something like this. Imagine Korean and Korean I don't know you from anyone. I just picked your name out of the list. Imagine Korean is asking a question in a meeting and her question is not well formed. She's still formulating as she's speaking. And she's taking a lot of time people are beginning to look at their phones. People are beginning to talk to people next to them. What I can do is politely paraphrase, I could say so what I'm hearing you ask is and I formulate a question for her or provide for her a question that She can then say yes, that's what I mean. Similarly, let's imagine Chris and I know there are several people named Chris, I'm not picking on any one of you. Let's imagine Chris is talking about, he has a lot of expertise in the topic we've just decided to discuss and he starts pontificating, maybe without malice, maybe with malice. What I can do is I can interrupt and say something such as Oh, that point, Chris, you just made about x is really important. I'm wondering what Tony thinks about it. So what I do is I validate what I have heard, interrupt and validate and then I move on and redirect, and I can either pull it back to the agenda, and I can say, oh, that relates to this topic, That's next on our agenda, or, and I can actually throw it to somebody else to actually speak. So literally take the floor away from the person involved. So using a paraphrase identifying something of value, they are saying, Now, if somebody is coming with a lot of spice, a lot of heat, there's some negativity and what they're saying, maybe towards you towards the meeting towards towards something, it's important to use paraphrasing as well. But in this case, where there is heat there, spice, it's important to acknowledge that without naming it, so I might say, for example, I might say, Louis, I hear that you've got a lot of passion for this topic. And the point you just made about x is really important, I'd love to share a different perspective. So it allows you to pull the conversation back, but it also acknowledges the emotion because if you don't acknowledge the emotion, it will in one make the person who's having the emotion feel worse. And two, it's in the room or it's in the it's on the zoom. So you actually have to acknowledge it. Otherwise, it might influence your credibility. So paraphrasing is a really, really important skill to practice and develop. So I'm going to ask each of you now, hopefully, you're willing and able, we're going to put you into a breakout room with a partner, just one other partner, hopefully, we'll have groups of two, if we have one group of three, it's okay. And I want each of you to practice paraphrasing. Now, we're not going to roll my roll, do some role playing about somebody coming with anger, or somebody coming in with confusion, we're simply going to do something very easy. I'm going to ask each of you to tell your partner a story of your name, some story related to your name, it could be why your name was chosen for you, it could be something funny about a confusion with your name, I want you to tell a story that is one minute in length. So it's a very short story about your name. And the reason I picked this is it's something that shouldn't cause you a lot of difficulty to think about. Your partner is going to listen to you tell the story of your name, and then paraphrase the story. So they're not going to repeat it word for word, they're simply going to extract the key meaning from your story. And then they're going to ask you immediately a question, a follow up question related to what you just said. And this is training the skill of paraphrasing question, because that's the tool. If you need to get people back because they're going on a tangent you paraphrase and you ask a question to bring people back. So we're going to practice that. Let me give you an example. I'm going to tell you a very quick story about my name. My name is Matt growing up, I was a portly kid, I was large, I was overweight. Many kids teased me fat Matt is what I grew up with through most of my early childhood. And it is motivated me today to to exercise and be health conscious. But more importantly, when I had children, I made sure that their names would not rhyme with anything derogatory. That's my story. Now, if you were listening, you might paraphrase by saying so it's unfortunate that it sounds like you had a lot of teasing as a young kid. And then your question might be what did you name your child? And I'll just share with you my older son is named Micah, nothing negative that we could find rhymes with Micah. So my point is you with your partners are each going to share a story like I did about your name, your partner upon hearing you finish your story, we'll do a quick paraphrase and ask you a question. You can choose to answer the question or not, if you wish, and then you will switch. Once you're in your pairs. The person whose birth month is closest to January in calendar order will go first. So if your birthday is in February, and your partners is in June, February, we'll go first. With that, let's put you into rooms you will have five minutes to do this activity. And then we'll come come back and wrap up so at least Can you do the magic work of putting people into pairs please. Elise Keith 59:44 All ready to go. We do have a couple of groups of three and if anybody's stranded when we get there. I will I will fix you magically on the back end. So On your mark, get set, go paraphrase. Unknown Speaker 59:57 Thank you Matt Abrahams 1:00:01 All right here come people. Here they come Unknown Speaker 1:00:06 to the Unknown Speaker 1:00:10 managing teams for innovation and success course at Stanford GSB. Oh, good with that. Yeah. They've Matt Abrahams 1:00:16 got some good faculty. Yeah. But we'd love to have it. We'd love to be able to offer classes in person, believe me. We'd love to have you out there. Yeah, those those courses are fun. And that's a good teaching team that they have on that one. antastic. All right. Well, thank you all for coming back. Let's do a quick poll. Everybody put your fist out like this, like your fist pumping bumping? Somebody, everybody fists out? How did your partner do paraphrasing you if it was done? Well, thumbs up if it was done sort of well, or not? So Well, everybody? How is the paraphrase? Look at those thumbs up. Excellent. Thank you. Paraphrasing is, I think the magic tool for dealing with many challenges that come around drift. In meetings, we have to practice the paraphrasing, we have to make sure that we are comfortable with it. And we can practice it in many aspects of our lives, your friends, your partners, your children, practice this paraphrasing. So when you are in a high stakes situation, you can manage it. Let me wrap up quickly simply by saying thank you for your time, it is my hope that you are leaving with tools that you can use to manage drift both in terms of things we can do proactively in terms of hygiene in terms of expectation setting in terms of engagement, and then actually in the midst by using paraphrasing to help. I'd like to if you're interested in learning more about this information, let me just quickly share some some things with you. I've written a book on communication skills, we use it in all of our Stanford GSB classes on communication speaking up without freaking out, I host a podcast I refer to sculpt, Think fast talk smart. And then finally, there's a site I curate called no freaking speaking.com has lots of tools on on things we've talked about today and beyond. And then the consulting practice, I started you you see in some of the slides that I've shown. Elise, I really, really appreciate this opportunity to be here with all of you. And I look forward to taking some questions if there's time after the week after at least wraps up for us. So with that, thank you for your time, let's all work to have better meetings. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank Elise Keith 1:02:33 you so much, Matt. So we are just right at the end of time. So what I'm going to do to make sure those of you who need to leave exactly on time can is I'm going to send some notes for you in terms of what you can expect from us next. The previous event and the background on this course the links are there, you will get an email from me within the next couple of days with a link to the recording from this the chats transcript, the links to Mac books, the links to the tech talks, and the collaboration, super cards on all of the things. And Matt and I will hang out here for several more minutes to answer questions, I see that there are a few. But I would love Love, love for you to tell Matt, before you go what you actually did, in fact get from this. And I would like to do this. We do this every time that was our bottom line up front. And this one I want to do as lightning fast as possible. So if you are willing to play, turn on your video, unmute your camera. And I would like you to share in one word or phrase the key idea you're taking from this session. And I'm going to nominate somebody and to get through as many people as we can as quickly as we can. After you speak. You pass the ball to the next person. All right, so that's cool. Haha, look at the look at the cameras shifting. Wonderful. So I am going to start with Michael Michael, what's your one word or phrase? Because I see you nodding so vigorously. Unknown Speaker 1:04:06 Yeah, definitely paraphrasing in question redirect is something I struggle with, like that junkie to sit up in time to time but how you're interacting Unknown Speaker 1:04:17 Brian Steinbrecher. Using your hands in front of the camera. Unknown Speaker 1:04:25 I don't see any names. Louis. Very, very, very. Yes. Great. Thanks. Unknown Speaker 1:04:31 I like very much the three engagement physical cognitive and linguistic. I like that to to sort the ideas thanks. Unknown Speaker 1:04:40 Sorry, fingers. Build curiosity during your during your presentation. So I'm gonna go to my last partner tomorrow. Unknown Speaker 1:04:52 I'm building engagement during the meeting and before the meeting nickel, nickel. Unknown Speaker 1:05:03 Can I say everything? paraphrasing would be great. And I'll pass it to Ramona, I Unknown Speaker 1:05:11 met her and you're Unknown Speaker 1:05:15 overloaded, you're muted. For me, it's to use as many forms of energy as you can bring. Unknown Speaker 1:05:23 And I will pass to Carol slaughter back. Unknown Speaker 1:05:29 Energy was my word as well. Elise Keith 1:05:35 Pretty passed to Carol. Oh, sorry. Sorry, Nancy. Unknown Speaker 1:05:40 Thank you. I, I love the idea of setting expectations as gutter guards. I thought that was a great concept. Yeah. I will pass it to Nan. You know, just the starting activity with the apps. And I'll pass it to Greg. Unknown Speaker 1:05:59 So for me the breaking up of a goal into information, emotion and action. And that information, that emotion aspect is I think, something lacking in my mindset. So that was like aha moments. Thank you very much. I pass it on to art. Unknown Speaker 1:06:16 Thanks, Greg. And whether what I really like most is to combine all those ideas quickly after each other. I think that was also very well done by Matt. Thanks a lot. I pass it on to Stefan. Thank you. So I loved very much the eight to 10 minute chunks and the frequent, very small changes. Thank you. And, Amy, Elise Keith 1:06:39 thank you. For me, the takeaway was texture, which is not a word we use at all, but the idea of variety of pace, and visual and all of those elements. And I will pass to Chris Tobin from my first group. Unknown Speaker 1:06:55 Great, thanks, Avi. And I would say those sort of three modes of engagement, particularly linguistic was new to me. Unknown Speaker 1:07:02 And it's Patricia with is still Unknown Speaker 1:07:05 here. Okay. Michael. Unknown Speaker 1:07:09 Michael, other thing? Unknown Speaker 1:07:11 Yeah. To me, engagement is the bone. Hello? Yes. Yeah. The engagement, the physical engagement, cognitive engagement, and linguistic engagment. Perfect. Yeah, I hate it from there. Thank you. Unknown Speaker 1:07:37 All right. Let's pass to ionic. Unknown Speaker 1:07:45 Be concrete during your meetings and making your points like that Unknown Speaker 1:07:49 to junkies? Unknown Speaker 1:07:52 I did. How about man did you do? You did Unknown Speaker 1:07:56 I think Richard and Barb. Unknown Speaker 1:08:00 Yes. I also like changing things up frequently. And they don't have to be big changes. So I like that. And Greg? Elise Keith 1:08:14 Barb, I think I think Greg's gone. Unknown Speaker 1:08:16 Barb. I'm sorry. Oh, yeah. I guess I Unknown Speaker 1:08:20 like the word practice in order to really, we have to practice in our practice that paraphrasing. Unknown Speaker 1:08:27 Mm hmm. Elise Keith 1:08:30 Okay, and I think Cindy, are you laughed? And is there anybody else who'd like to speak after Cindy, if you do wave vigorously, so she can see you. I like the validation of paraphrasing, I was already doing that. So that that's encouraging to do that more. And that actually is the best technique because I've been worried there was something else so thank you for that validation, and Unknown Speaker 1:08:51 I'll get better at Matt Abrahams 1:08:53 I'm open to finding others. Yes. Unknown Speaker 1:08:55 Was there anyone else? Elise Keith 1:08:59 Awesome. Thank you so much for playing. This is a totally fun now. I saw it earlier. And Louis, you had a question? And did you want to answer that now? Unknown Speaker 1:09:09 Yes, we had an issue with Nancy because when we have to decide who should start we are both in the same data segments. Unknown Speaker 1:09:17 So my that Matt Abrahams 1:09:19 that happens occasionally what I have learned as a teacher is that if you don't give people tell who's gonna start they spend half their time trying to figure out who starts so that's a risk when you do birthday. But but at least now you guys are connected when it when is your When is your birthday? The same day as Unknown Speaker 1:09:39 just me? It's easy. Matt Abrahams 1:09:43 May 6, all right. Well, you got a few months coming up, but Happy birthday. Thank you in advance. Unknown Speaker 1:09:51 Morrow, did you want to ask your question? Unknown Speaker 1:09:54 Oh, yes, please. I will depart drifting from the goal of the Meeting but I really love the non distracting background that the master is using. So can you tell us a bit more about that? Matt Abrahams 1:10:12 This is just a screen that I have. Let me if you guys will indulge me for two seconds, I'm going to share. Go ahead, please. Unknown Speaker 1:10:22 Thank you for showing up I Matt Abrahams 1:10:23 want to. So when I first started, where is it? When I first started teaching from home, this is my environment. So this is where I am today I am in my garage. I started with my ironing board, but you can see the screen that I was talking about right there. Now I'm happy to say that I have upgraded. And this is now what I teach from today. And this is where I'm seated in front of now. So I built a standing desk. I have my laptop raised you see I've got the lights above I've got all my supplies, my coffee, my water, my headset. So I've definitely spent some time with that hygiene, trying to think about how I can set the environment to work for me. Because I am relegated to my garage. I have two teenage boys and a wife that works. And if I go inside that house, I cannot have any silence or focus. So I've let you in behind the curtain. That's what's going on behind the scenes here. Unknown Speaker 1:11:28 Thank you very much. Yeah. All right. Are Elise Keith 1:11:34 there any final questions? All right, guys. It's been so fabulous. Seeing you all today. I look forward hopefully to seeing you at some of our upcoming events. Our next one is later. Unknown Speaker 1:11:55 February. Elise Keith 1:11:56 Yeah, so actually, actually, we have one before then we have a first first which is shirota, who's going to be talking he's a business leader and an entrepreneur is going to be talking about meeting operating systems. So this is basically how do you design meetings so that your team's work effectively in a business setting on a day in day out basis. It's pretty, pretty heavy stuff compared to what we normally talk about, which is like in the meeting, we're going to be talking about the entire business of running meetings across the board. So I'm very excited about that. And then Nancy, talk about what you're doing on the night. Unknown Speaker 1:12:31 So I'm working with a colleague who's an expert in using improv, and we're mashing together our areas of expertise and talking and demonstrating about how how you can apply improv techniques to create more engaging virtual meetings. Matt Abrahams 1:12:49 Ah, that's fantastic, Nancy. Unknown Speaker 1:12:52 Yeah, it's improv is scary for a lot of people. So we're trying to help people over over people overcome some of their fears and using improv. Elise Keith 1:13:03 Sounds like it's gonna be fun. Matt Abrahams 1:13:04 So there's a ton. There's a talk that I did that plays on that for not meetings, but for speaking and I just put it into the chat if you just go to YouTube and type in Think fast, Puck smart. You'll see my take on that, Nancy, and I love that you're applying it to meetings that is so important, and I hope to attend and learn from you. Unknown Speaker 1:13:24 Thank you. I look forward to it. Elise Keith 1:13:28 All right, everybody. Well have a wonderful Unknown Speaker 1:13:31 evening day, whatever Elise Keith 1:13:32 it is that you're at and enjoy it and enjoy the rest of your week. Peace forever. Thank Unknown Speaker 1:13:37 you. Bye. Thanks, everybody. That was great. Thank you. Thank you, Unknown Speaker 1:13:47 Elise. Thank Matt Abrahams 1:13:48 you so much. Awesome. feedback. Thank you. Yeah, I will Elise Keith 1:13:54 follow up with all of that stuff with you later. Okay. Matt Abrahams 1:13:56 Excellent. All right. Take care. Have a good day. Bye. Bye.