Nick Morgan's Blog

The story you tell yourself is the most important story.  You learn that story from a thousand sources – your caregivers, your authority figures, your family, friends, peers, teachers, and your experiences. What story do you tell yourself? I buried myself in books as a child to escape a ferocious family.  While they were busy ...

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At the simplest level, let’s call it Level One, public speaking is a performance.  The speaker appears in front of a passive audience and delivers a scripted (more or less) combination of words, images, videos, and so on.  It’s up to the audience, at this stage, to pay attention as much as it can, or ...

The post The World Needs More Level Three Speaking! appeared first on Public Words.

When you go to the movies, just about every moment has music underneath. From the swelling strings that tell you something inspiring is about to happen, to the subtle bass that tightens your stomach before the twist, music amps up your emotions before your brain even catches up. But when you go to a conference, ...

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Want to remember new words—or new ideas—faster and more completely? Your hands are the key to memory. A study published in Current Biology (Mayer et al., 2015) found that people who used gestures while learning a new language remembered vocabulary far better than those who only listened or watched. The researchers taught participants a made-up ...

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A new theory of mind, proposed by Professor Andrew Budson and his colleagues in 2022, further articulates what the neuroscience has been telling us for some time, and what I have been proposing in this blog for almost as long – and yields a surprising insight for anyone who wants to speak powerfully in public. ...

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The times they are wrathful, and the art of apology seems to be atrophying. We are quick to take offense, slow to forgive, and often too proud -- or too defensive -- to admit when we are wrong. Yet perhaps if we brushed up on our apology skills, we could help ease the tension in ...

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We are only beginning to scratch the surface of understanding how the human brain works. Neuroscientists remind us again and again that most of our thinking is unconscious. The conscious mind—our ability to reason, analyze, and explain—operates like the visible tip of an iceberg, while the massive structure below remains hidden, shaping us in ways ...

The post Why We Love Curves – and How to Use Them to Communicate appeared first on Public Words.

Which do you think is more important for speakers, thought leaders, and leaders to be:  cool or good? Let’s look into these two words a little more deeply before we decide.  The slang use of the word ‘cool’ has had an unusually long run (for slang).  By all accounts, ‘cool’ has been cool for about ...

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What do you think of when you hear the phrase dress for success?  Perhaps it's a no-brainer for you, or perhaps you dismiss it as vanity—wearing a well-cut suit or polished shoes so others will take you more seriously. But the truth is more complex -- and important. How we present ourselves doesn’t just change ...

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I just completed two days of teaching in Harvard's continuing education program for mid-career executives.  It's one of my favorite assignments.  The students come from all over the US and the world, and they are curious, expert in their own fields, and ready to network and learn. And this group was particularly honest and open.  ...

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