Podcast Research

Hi Y'all,

This week, I chose to listen to Think Fast, Talk Smart by Matt Abrahams. Abrahams is a lecturer of Strategic Communication at Stanford, so he definitely knows his stuff. The episode I chose to listen to this week is called "Directive Speech vs. Dialogue: How Leaders Communicate with Clarity, Balance". Here's the link for this week's episode:

https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/directive-speech-vs-dialogue-how-leaders-communicate-clarity-balance

One of my favorite snippets from the podcast is during an interview with the previous dean of Stanford, Jon Levin. Levin states that during his time as dean he really had to reinforce the idea that , "... communication serves to inform people, to connect with people, to motivative and inspire them" (Think Fast, Talk Smart). Throughout this course, we have really learned what it takes to be an effective communicator. During the first week of this class, we learned about the seven C's of communication.



The value that John Levin really seems to hone in on in this podcast is ... Clarity! As we can see above, Clarity makes our communication easy to understand, and truly hits home the message we are talking about (Professor Green). This is something that I tend to struggle with when I communicate, as I tend to make things over confusing. Meaning, even when I know what I am trying to say, a lot of the time my point isn't clearly understood. It seems like Levin has also struggled with Clarity in the past, though he has had ample time to improve his skills. Levin states, "I find that to be one of the most complicated and challenging set of questions in leadership, communication, figuring out what to talk about and how to talk about it, wanting to be able to make clear statements about what I think or institutional values to reassure groups of people who really want to hear something about that. But at the same time, leaving space for people to form their own opinions, to discuss ideas, to debate what’s going on because that diversity of ideas, of viewpoints of perspectives is just so absolutely central to our mission" (Think Fast, Talk Smart).

Lack of Clarity clearly is something that we have all struggled with. Tying this back to my previous post, pretty much anywhere you look online, there is bound to be an example of someone who lacks clarity in speeches. Whether its long winded political diatribes (with no clear goal), extremely uninformative news articles, or even small headlines, clarity tends to take a backseat. I really think that this is detrimental to the way that we communicate with each other, so I think that Levin's talks about improving clarity in communication is essential to listen to!

P.S. Here's a picture of Johnathan Levin mid-speech.

Works Cited

DirectDirective Speech Vs. Dialogue: How Leaders Communicate With Clarity, Balance. (2024, July 9). Stanford Graduate School of Business. https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/directive-speech-vs-dialogue-how-leaders-communicate-clarity-balance

Green. (n.d.). 7 C's of effective communication. https://canvas.oregonstate.edu/courses/1967106/pages/7-cs-of-effective-communication