248. Better Together: How to Supercharge Your Team’s Productivity

Think Fast Talk Smart: Communication Techniques

Think Fast Talk Smart

Career, Public Speaking, Career Growth, Career Skills, Language Learning, Education, Communicating, Careers, Communication, Influence, Business, Improv, Leadership

4.7 • 806 Ratings

🗓️ 9 December 2025

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The secret to effective teamwork and collaboration.

To collaborate, we have to communicate. As Molly Sands knows, “The more that we can get on the same page, the more effective we are.”

Sands is a behavioral scientist and the head of the Teamwork Lab at Atlassian, where she researches how teams can collaborate more effectively and efficiently, especially in distributed and hybrid work environments. As she’s seen in her research and within her own team, “People can accomplish a lot more together when they work well together.” The key to unlocking that potential lies in communication that aligns people not just in their activity, but in their deeper goals and vision. “The best work happens when you start by asking why,” she says, “getting people to really understand: why is this a problem, why do we wanna solve it, and how are we uniquely positioned to do that? The more that we can map this out together, the more effective our teams tend to be.”

In this episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, Sands and host Matt Abrahams discuss strategies for effective collaboration, from “page-led” meetings and asynchronous video messages to using AI as a collaborator. Whether your team is working face-to-face or across time zones, Sands’ insights show how better communication is the key to better collaboration.

Episode Reference Links:

On Apple:

(21:15) 241. Team Spirit: How to Make Group Work Work

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Chapters:

(00:00) - Introduction
(02:18) - How the Teamwork Lab Works
(03:49) - Top Challenges for Teams
(04:23) - Clarifying Goals & Alignment
(07:05) - AI as a Collaborative Partner
(09:11) - Atlassian’s AI Onboarding Buddy
(12:35) - Rethinking Meetings
(15:44) - Three Types of Work Time
(17:03) - Replacing Meetings with Asynchronous Video
(19:48) - The Final Three Questions
(24:34) - Conclusion

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, Matt here. Before we get started, I wanted to remind you about our new Think Fast Talk Smart
0:04.7	Learning community, where listeners from around the world can come together to practice and
0:09.1	transform their communication and careers. Members get access to exclusive on-demand learning
0:14.3	lessons, guided quests, live book club calls, an AI coach, Matt, and much more. Join today at
0:20.5	faster smarter.com slash learning. If you sign up before
0:23.9	January 2nd, you will get one month free. And with the holidays coming, you can give the gift of
0:29.3	better communication. Join soon so you can be part of our first live book club on December 11th,
0:35.3	and an AMA, Ask Matt Anything on December 16th.
0:38.7	Go to FasterSmarter.io slash learning to join.
0:42.6	Now here's a message from one of our sponsors.
0:46.2	Here at Think Fast Talk Smart, we move fast.
0:49.3	From writing interview questions to crafting emails, proposals, and presentation notes.
0:53.6	But juggling all those pieces
0:55.3	across different tools, that can really slow you down. Switching tabs, copying and pacing between
1:00.7	apps, trying to remember where the last edit lives, it's time consuming and quite honestly a little
1:05.8	frustrating. That's why I use Grammarly. It's tailor-made for professionals who need to take a project
1:10.5	from blank page to polished finish, all in one place. An AI isn't going anywhere, so why not use it
1:16.7	to your advantage? Grammarly's real-time suggestions, tone feedback, and AI chat help me brainstorm and
1:23.3	fine-tune faster. So keep your ideas flowing and stay focused on what really matters, your message.
1:29.0	Sign up for free and experience how Grammarly can elevate your professional writing from start to
1:33.9	finish. Visit Grammarly.com slash podcast. That's Grammarly.com slash podcast. Collaboration is critical to teaming. But how do we do it so that we feel effective and
1:52.4	unburdened? My name is Matt Abrams, and I teach strategic communication at Stanford Graduate
	...

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