The Power of Regret

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Matt Abrahams: Who is a communicator that you admire and why? He says it's not somebody I know, but someone who might be alive. The first three ingredients of a successful communication recipe are simplicity, brevity,. And he says they're all very powerful bits of advice and guidance. Think Fast, Talk Smart airs weekly on the Stanford Graduate School of Business' YouTube channel.

“What people regret over time are things they didn't do. They didn't take that trip, they didn't ask that person out on a date. They didn't start that business,” says former political speech writer and best-selling author Dan Pink. “I think it's because we are slightly over-indexed on risk. We overstate the risk in many circumstances.”

On this episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, strategic communications lecturer Matt Abrahams sits down with Pink to hear how we should all take more risks and how leaders can inspire others by focusing on the why instead of the how.

“There's almost incontrovertible evidence that sense of purpose is the most cost effective performance enhancer that organizations have,” Pink says.

They also discuss the power in taking breaks, which Pink considers part of performance, not a deviation from it. “What we know from many domains is that professionals take breaks. It's not that amateurs take breaks and the professionals don't, it's the exact opposite.”

Pink’s latest book is The Power of Regret, How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward.

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