249. Quick Thinks: Rituals That Make Teamwork Work

Hi. Matt here. Think back to a time when you knew exactly what you wanted to say, but couldn't quite find the right words. Maybe it was a tough conversation, a moment that really mattered, or something you didn't wanna mess up. Wouldn't it have been great to have a helpful communication coach right there with you? That's exactly why we built AI Coach Matt, a tool you can use to help you think through what you wanna say and how to say it. It's as if you were speaking directly to me as your communication coach, and I respond immediately. It's been available inside our learning community for a while, and now we're opening it up so you can try it for free. Go to fastersmarter.io/learning, and click on the AI coach map pop up in the bottom right corner. Give it a try at fastersmarter.io/learning, and let me know what you think in any of our social media platforms. Now a word from one of our sponsors. Their support allows us to bring you quality content free of charge. Hi. Matt here. How many times has a bad interaction with a sales or customer service rep changed how you see a company? Communication can be your team's biggest weakness or its greatest superpower. Virtual speech helps people build their skills through dynamic AI role plays, instant feedback, and one on one AI coaching. Practice public speaking for different conversations, sales pitches, and interviews, all in a judgment free space. I've often recommended my students use virtual speech to practice for my class. Available online and in virtual reality, virtual speech boosts skills by 20% and confidence by 30% in just twenty minutes. Visit virtualspeech.com to learn how AI powered learning can transform your team. The ability to collaborate well with others, to learn, to do, to plan, often determines the success of your relationships, both in your personal and professional lives. My name is Matt Abrahams, and I teach strategic communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to this quick thinks episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. I had a fantastic, insightful conversation with Molly Sands, who heads up the Teamwork Lab at Atlassian. Molly shared so many valuable skills and ideas that we couldn't put them all in one episode. So here comes some more practical, tactical tips on how to collaborate better and institute important collaborative rituals. I know a lot of what you do as a company, but you personally, is focus on collaboration. And I'd love for you to explain to me what effective collaboration is and how do you assess that? How do you assess collaboration? What is it? And then do you have one or two best practices to help us all be better in the collaboration that we do? Yeah. I think a ton about this, and I think it's one of the biggest challenges. Right? How do you measure this thing that feels so ephemeral in so …