# The Psychology Of Speaking Under Pressure | Matt Abrahams

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/finding-mastery-with-dr-michael-gervais-4955/the-psychology-of-speaking-under-pressure-matt-abrahams
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/finding-mastery-with-dr-michael-gervais-4955/the-psychology-of-speaking-under-pressure-matt-abrahams.md
Podcast: [Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais](https://stenobird.com/podcast/finding-mastery-with-dr-michael-gervais-4955)
Published: 2026-07-29T07:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://findingmastery.com/podcasts/matt-abrahams
Audio file: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/pscrb.fm/rss/p/mgln.ai/e/120/rss.art19.com/episodes/bc85340d-ec78-44dc-9381-e923a15e8938.mp3?rss_browser=BAhJIg90cmFuc2NyaWJyBjoGRVQ%3D--952c5701c84ad333c69d5faa668f8177091704f0
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/finding-mastery-with-dr-michael-gervais-4955/episodes/the-psychology-of-speaking-under-pressure-matt-abrahams
Duration seconds: 2910

## Resource

When the moment arrives and you don’t have a script, are you trying to impress, or working to connect? Matt Abrahams is a lecturer in organizational behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, host of the Think Fast, Talk Smart podcast, and author of Think Faster, Talk Smarter: How to Speak Successfully When You’re Put on the Spot . His path into this work starts very young and is almost comically literal. His last name starts with AB, so all through school he was the one teachers called on first. He felt what it is to be put on the spot before he had any tools for it. Later, in the corporate world and then at Stanford, he watched how much rides on those unscripted and authentic moments, and he set out to study what actually helps. The central idea of this conversation is freeing: speaking in the moment is a skill, not a gift you’re either born with or not. Like any athlete, you can learn it and train it, and, as Matt puts it, you can prepare to be spontaneous. That reframe changes everything downstream. When the spotlight hits and the heart starts pounding, the body reads the moment as a threat. The work is learning to meet it as an opportunity instead, to buy yourself a little space, and to put your attention where it belongs: on the person in front of you rather than on your own performance. Matt and Mike spend time in this conversation getting quite practica. Matt shares the two tools to reach for when your mind goes blank, the simple What, So What, Now What structure for organizing a thought under pressure, and a listening practice he calls pace, space, grace. Mike opens up too, telling the story of a first international conference where he tried to breathe his way to calm on stage and realized, mid-panic, that he had never trained the skill he needed mo…

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## Transcript

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