Frances Frei, a Harvard Business School professor and former Uber executive, shares her insights on simplifying communication for greater impact. She discusses strategies for building trust and fostering inclusion, emphasizing the balance of authenticity and empathy. Frei highlights the importance of storytelling in problem-solving and the role of clarity in dialogue. She also pays tribute to comedians for their ability to make complex ideas relatable, while underscoring the joy and intent behind effective communication.
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Building Trust
Treat trust like any other buildable asset, understanding its components.
Rebuild trust by focusing on the specific weakened area, not everything.
insights INSIGHT
Trust Triangle
Trust has three components: authenticity, logic, and empathy.
Lack of trust always stems from a wobble in one of these three components.
volunteer_activism ADVICE
Reflecting on Trust
Reflect on communication breakdowns with curiosity from the other person's perspective.
Instead of blaming others for lack of trust, ask how your communication hinders trust-building.
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In 'Think Faster, Talk Smarter', Matt Abrahams offers tangible, actionable skills to help even the most anxious speakers succeed in spontaneous communication. The book provides strategies for managing anxiety, responding to the mood of the room, and making content concise, relevant, compelling, and memorable. Drawing on stories from his clients and students, Abrahams offers best practices for navigating Q&A sessions, job interviews, providing effective feedback, making small talk, fixing faux pas, persuading others, and handling other impromptu speaking tasks.
Move Fast and Fix Things
The Trusted Leader's Guide to Solving Hard Problems
Frances X. Frei
Anne Morriss
This book challenges the belief that speed and excellence are mutually exclusive. Frances Frei and Anne Morriss, based on their work with companies like Uber, Riot Games, and WeWork, outline five essential steps to solve hard problems quickly while strengthening organizations. These steps include identifying real problems, building and rebuilding trust, creating a thriving culture, communicating powerfully, and empowering teams. The book offers a one-week plan to implement these steps and improve organizational performance at an exhilarating speed.
You said it. But did they hear it? For Frances Frei, communication is about saying things simply enough for an audience to truly understand.
As a professor of technology and operations management at Harvard Business School, Frei knows that shaping culture within organizations requires communicating in ways that influence how people think and act. The problem for many leaders, she says, is that when we “understand something deeply, we describe it in a complicated way. If you want broad influence and persuasion, we have to understand it really deeply. And then describe it in a simple and compelling enough way that others can take action.”
Think Fast Talk Smart: Communication Techniques 
