Becoming A Master Of Public Speaking With Dr. Nick Morgan

 

Dr. Nick Morgan is one of America’s top communication theorists and coaches who founded Public Words Inc, a consulting firm specializing in communications. He joins Adam Markel to discuss how to master the art of public speaking and use it to your business advantage. From harnessing your “sixth sense” to leveraging your most catastrophic experiences, Dr. Morgan breaks down how to craft a captivating story that will attract and inspire your target audience. He also explains how to elevate your public speaking by eliminating the most boring and predictable parts without losing the authenticity of your spoken word.

Get the newest Change Proof Podcast episode delivered directly to you – subscribe here. And, if you’re enjoying the podcast, please give us a 5-star rating on iTunes! For instructions click here.

How do we leverage continuous uncertainty to thrive in this unprecedented new world?

The answer is to build the resilience we need to power us through the challenges we face so that we become “Change Proof.” Prepare to tackle the future with confidence by reading Adam’s latest book Change Proof: Leveraging the Power of Uncertainty to Build Long-Term Resilience.

 

Show Notes:

• 06:13 – The Art Of Public Speaking With A Purpose
• 12:57 – Removing Boredom And Predictability In Your Stories
• 17:42 – How AI Is Changing How Stories Are Written And Told
• 20:54 – Harnessing The Power Of Your Sixth Sense
• 25:17 – How Leaders Can Become Powerful Speakers
• 31:34 – Stories To Tell Yourself In The Face Of Uncertainty
• 44:08 – Discussion Wrap-up And Closing Words

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Get the newest Change Proof Podcast episode delivered directly to you – subscribe here. And, if you’re enjoying the podcast, please give us a 5-star rating on iTunes! For instructions click here.

How do we leverage continuous uncertainty to thrive in this unprecedented new world? 
The answer is to build the resilience we need to power us through the challenges we face so that we become “Change Proof.” Prepare to tackle the future with confidence by reading Adam’s latest book Change Proof: Leveraging the Power of Uncertainty to Build Long-Term Resilience.

—

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Listen to the podcast here

Becoming A Master Of Public Speaking With Dr. Nick Morgan

Everybody, welcome back to another episode of the show. I have a dear friend joining the show, and he is just this remarkable man. Somebody you are going to learn a lot from. I absolutely guarantee that you are going to walk away with something very special from this conversation. I want to get right into it, not waste any time. I am going to read his bio and jump right in with my first question for Dr. Nick Morgan. He is one of America’s top communication speakers, theorists, and coaches, and a passionate teacher.

He is committed to helping people find clarity in their thinking and ideas and delivering them with panache. What a great word that is, right? He has been commissioned by Fortune 50 companies to write for many CEOs and presidents. He has coached people to give congressional testimony, to appear in the media, and to deliver unforgettable keynote speeches. He has himself spoken, led conferences, and moderated panels and venues around the world. His latest book is Can You Hear Me? On the perils of virtual communication, published by Harvard in 2018. He is at work on a new book to be published in 2026 on the embodied voice about claiming and perfecting your unique leadership voice. Everybody, please welcome Dr. Nick Morgan to the show.

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Nick, that was a reminder in case you have forgotten who you were.

Thanks.

Reading your bio and sharing a little bit about your life, hopefully, it tickles your memory about the things you have done in your life. All that is super impressive and interesting. My question to you is related to it, but different. What is one thing that is not part of that introduction and your CV, one thing that you would love for people to know about you at the start of our conversation?

Let us jump into it. I do what I do, which is help people tell their stories, because as a boy, I thought I had failed in helping one person in particular tell her story. That was my sister. She was born with birth defects, and she struggled all her life with mental illness. I was ten months apart from her in age. I felt like I was her translator to the world. I thought she was not crazy, but rather, she had a unique perspective. If I could just explain that, people would understand and accept her. Of course, that is a terrible burden to put on a 6-year-old, an 8-year-old, a 12-year-old. It took me a long time to realize that there was no way I could have succeeded at that. My passion for helping people tell their stories comes from that initial failure in my mind to do an adequate job of saving my sister.

You and I know each other a little bit. It is not our first gathering, our meeting to talk. Sometimes that is the case with a show’s guest. You may be having the actual first time you are physically in a conversation. I did not know that. I did not have a clue as to why. It is years ago now, probably too many years to want to actually say, but when Simon Sinek had his breakthrough moment and had his TED talk go viral, the concept of sharing your why was so powerful in that. I think a lot of people did start to think more about how important it is that other people understand their why. I am just curious, Nick, have you shared your why narrowly or widely?

I occasionally do when I move to talking to an old friend, for example, but I have not written about it yet. I am working on it right now as we speak. I am hopeful to have that book. It is a long story, and there are many nuances. I am hoping to have that story out in the world in a year or two.

Is there anything in particular that has been a catalyst for that willingness to open up about that, or just share something that is quite personal and quite private with other people?

Part of the reason why she was the way she was was that she was operated on as an infant. In those days, because anesthetics were risky, you had to get the proportions right. An anesthesiologist can cause the death of a patient if he or she gets it wrong. In those days, there was a belief that because infants did not have a fully structured memory yet, they would not remember the pain.

Unbelievably, they operated on infants without anesthesia. It is hard even to say out loud. It is such an appalling thing. We always believed in our family that a lot of her trauma naturally enough came from that. It turns out research has shown that since infants do remember pain, they do remember things the instant they are out of the womb. In fact, some infants have memories of time in the womb. That was just a horrific misunderstanding and a medical travesty that was operated on far too many infants back in the day.

It is shocking to look back at 20, 30, 50, 100 years ago, the things that we did not know. It really is amazing, the ignorance.

One of those things that we do not know now that people will look back 50 years from now and be just as appalled, just as horrified, or just as incredulous that we did not know.

What a great way to lead into a conversation.

What do we not know?

The Art Of Public Speaking With A Purpose

What are the things that people will literally be laughing about 50 years from now that we thought were true or that we somehow thought were best practices? This is going to be quite an inelegant segue, I suppose. You and I both spent a lot of time focusing on the world of leadership and work. We come at it from different angles. Where you and I have a tremendous amount in common is that we both have a deep love and respect for the power of the spoken word. You have trained people and taught people in that arena.

I have, as well as a postscript to my career as a lawyer, which I had to often stand up in court and bare my soul, only to be sliced and diced like with a Ginsu knife by a judge or not so often by my adversaries. I was okay on my feet in those moments, but the judge always got the last word. It never failed. The move from that profession into the world of speaking professionally and helping other leaders speak powerfully is what you have spent a lot of time focusing on. You have just finished a class, teaching a class at Harvard.

You are on the other side of that. I know that this is even asking a lot for you now that you have already emptied your cup. As anybody who has facilitated those kinds of things, you put it all out there, and you leave nothing behind, and then you have to recover. I am finding myself in conversation with you right in the middle of your recovery process. Can you share a little bit about what this class was like for you? What is a win? What is something that you are celebrating from the recent class that you just taught?

It is always funny because one of the questions I ask early on is how many of you believe you should be storytellers? Always, a hundred percent of the class raises their hand. These are mid-career people from all over the world, from many of the states in the United States. English is a second, third, or fourth language for some of them. It is an incredible variety of people and backgrounds, and yet all of them have now learned or have gotten the idea that they should be storytellers. I start talking about stories. Part of the class is that I offer the chance for a half dozen out of 40 or 50 volunteers to give a brief talk toward the end of the second day to get videotaped and get feedback.

There are always a few people who are brave enough to do that. They have had the benefit of my discussion of body language, intent, content, storytelling, persona, and all these things that we talk about. Every single one of them, with very rare exceptions, stands up and gives me their resume. When you say, introduce yourself for a few minutes, 3 to 5 minutes, your job is to tell this audience and the world why you do what you do. To a person, they will say, “I went to school as an electrical engineer. When I graduated, I got a job at Cisco, and I worked there for a couple of years.

I went to Intuit, and I worked there for a couple of years.” By the second company, your eyes are glazing over. Nobody can hold a list in their heads. I have just spent a day telling them they have got to tell stories. Typically, one out of the group will actually tell a story. It is amazing to watch the effect on the audience. The students eat it up, they love it, and they respond. Everybody knows they should be storytellers. Yet storytelling is hard. Even if you have just sat in a class in which I have instructed you on how to tell stories, it is still hard to do. Do you want to know the central reason for this, Adam?

I do.

The central reason is that the essence of a story is conflict. Deep in the soul of business people, organizationally successful people everywhere is the desire to smooth over conflict, to solve conflict, to avoid conflict, to negate conflict, to fix conflict. When I say you have got to tell a story and it has got to have conflict in it, that is hard. That is why I have a job.

The essence of a story of conflict. Everyone desires to smooth over, solve, avoid, negate, and fix conflicts. Share on X

It is fascinating that aspect of the things that in the hero’s journey would be the time when we fall down, the time when we are cast out, the time when we are on the edge, etc. These are the things that in the business world we believe you avoid like the plague. We talk and potentially see in other people, you avoid like the plague. You keep them at the greatest distance possible so that no one should think that you are not perfect.

I talk with CEOs who want to give great speeches, or they want to become thought leaders after being a CEO, and get paid tons of money for giving keynote speeches. They will say, “There are five things I did that made me a CEO. Accident or luck is never one of those five things, never. It is typically something like I got up earlier than everybody else, I worked harder than everybody else, I was smarter than everybody else.” I am the one who has to tell them. “I’m sorry, that is really boring.” Nobody wants to hear that.

What they want to hear is the mistakes you made and how you overcame those mistakes. Why? That is what makes us human. We know we all overcome enormous mistakes, setbacks, and problems to achieve something as lofty as a CEO status. That is the hard part for them, to say these are the mistakes I made. Nobody wants to talk about these things. It is a conflict, and it is hard.

 

Removing Boredom And Predictability In Your Stories

I will sometimes ask other people who either speak or think they might someday want to speak. I’ll say, “What is the one thing that you have to avoid as a public speaker, or if you are giving presentations at work? It is just one thing, one specific thing that you have to make sure never happens.” They look at me quizzically, like what could that one thing possibly be? To me, it is what you just said, but I will sometimes use the word boredom. The person who was my mentor, training my style of speaking post-law, used to be super cutting.

Just like very sharp with critique in the debriefs. This person used the word boring a lot. I will use the word boring, but I come to call it something else. You must not be predictable. Predictability is the death of any talk, whether it is a TED talk or a presentation of any kind. The second that people know where you are headed or sense that nothing is going to change, meaning your tone, your pace, your variance, your physicality, that moment for sure, their emails are more compelling. Their text messages, LinkedIn, and seeing whether people have liked or commented are more interesting than you in that moment.

That is so true.

When you sit in the back of an audience, you probably have done this too, because you and I both do quite a bit of our own keynote speaking. Sometimes you are there at an event, and there are other speakers. I will sometimes sit in the back of the room for some other speaker to learn, to be a student, and to see what the context is. What does it feel like in the room? What is the energy?

It is a great technique. That is a great way to ease into a speech.

How frequently, when sitting in the back of the room, do you see that as soon as some speakers become predictable, then people immediately see their heads go down? You see the little shining light coming up from the seat. They are losing them.

I vividly remember a funny instance of that about a decade ago. I was speaking at a conference, and somebody was following right after me. I had a 10:00 slot, and they were at 11:00. One of the pieces of advice I often give to people, especially if they are executives, not professional speakers, I will say, “Do not begin with a joke because often the advice is to begin with a joke to set everybody at their ease.” I say, “The risk is too high. If the joke falls flat, it is worse than if you just started by saying your name, because now you are beginning with a failure, and everybody feels uncomfortable. To pull yourself out of that is a tricky thing. Do not risk it. Let the humor evolve later on in the talk.”

 

This was before I took my own advice. I began with a joke. I thought it was a good joke, and it landed well, and the audience laughed. After I was done, it was a fine speech. I went and sat down in the back, and the next speaker got up, and I will be damned if he did not begin with the same joke. Because he was not sitting in the audience, he had not bothered to do that. He did not know that I had just told that joke. Imagine the poor guy. I felt so bad for him, but there was no way I could know what he was going to do and no way I could tell him, “Do not tell that joke.” It’s because he told it, it went completely flat because the audience had literally just heard it 40 minutes before.

I do not care. This could have been twenty years ago. I am still cringing.

Can you imagine? The poor guy felt so bad for him, but he was mystified because he had surely told the joke. This was a joke that was making the rounds, but it was still pretty fresh at that point. I am sure he told it the previous week, and it had done really well, and suddenly it bombed. There was no way you could imagine what had happened to him.

How AI Is Changing How Stories Are Written And Told

Back to the idea of what we are going to know 50 years from now that we should have known today? That is an interesting question in so many different arenas. In public speaking, what might be true there? AI obviously has taken the landscape to some degree that is almost incalculable. Everybody is aware of it, trying to adopt it, and spending money on it. Nobody knows what it is really capable of and how they will ultimately use it. Bill Maher, who is a comedian, has his own show on TV and, I don’t know, better part of 30 years, Politically Incorrect.

The show that he currently has on HBO, but he says that AI can never replace a comedian. It can never do the job. I am wondering whether the same thing applies to spoken word, with the art of telling stories, whether they are comedic relief or serious stories. With AI, what can you imagine that we do not know today that in 50 years will seem like it is passe? Is there anything that comes to mind, or is the spoken word still a human-to-human thing that is not likely to change?

That’s the beautiful thing about spoken word and comedians and their acts as well, anybody who talks seriously about AI will tell you that the thing that AI lacks, it will get very good and it is getting better all the time at predicting the right word to say next. It will possibly write the speeches for us. What it lacks is the literal embodied meaning of what it is saying. It is not knowing what it is saying.

It is merely making a statistical prediction based on the previous word, what the next word should be. It has no idea how a story lands or how a human is affected by an emotional connection. That human-to-human exchange of what the neuroscientists call mirror neurons, which is how we exchange emotion, that is something that AI, as far as the eye can see, maybe not 50 years out, hasn’t been hooked up to humanity that tightly yet. I do not see that changing.

Harnessing The Power Of Your Sixth Sense

You published a blog recently talking about a sixth sense. Would you share a little bit about that because I want to connect the dots there and maybe take a risk with a potential position I may take in a minute? Could you share a little bit about that blog and the sixth sense with the audience, Nick?

One of the things about virtual communication that is so challenging is that you and I are talking to each other. You look to me like you are about three feet away because I am standing about three feet away from the computer, but you are the wrong size for somebody who is three feet away. You are not big enough to be actually three feet away. Your sixth sense is called proprioception. This is something that, for some reason, I do not teach in school. Everybody learns about the five senses. Nobody learns about the sixth sense. It is arguably more essential than any of the others, which is your body.

Indeed, every cell in your body sends information to your brain about your proprioception, which is where you are in space and where the other people that you can see are in space. That is a uniquely human thing. We keep track of other humans where we are and where other humans are in relation to us. The reasons are not hard to imagine why we have evolved that sense. We need to know where people are so we do not bump into them. We need to know when they are close so we can hug them. We need to be able to read their body language so we know whether they are threatening us or meaning us well. For all those reasons, we need to know where people are.

It is a uniquely human thing to keep track of our fellow humans and their relationship to us. Share on X

That sixth sense then keeps us safe, literally, as well as allows us to connect with other people. It is difficult to imagine AI developing proprioception and therefore having that embodied relationship with other people. The thing about this is so powerful, and I work on this with speakers all the time. There was a time when coaches like you and me, maybe a decade ago, it was fashionable to say movement is interesting. This is in terms of what people do on stage. How do you keep an audience engaged? Movement is interesting. We tend to look once we see something moving in our field of vision. Therefore, more movement must be better. They would tell speakers to pace up and down like the proverbial caged tiger back and forth on the stage.

 

The problem is movement, yes, it is interesting, but only a specific kind of movement. We care about movement toward us and away from us. That is the only movement that is relevant to humans at a deep level. Are you coming toward me? Do I need to pay more attention? Are you like me? Are you connecting with me? All the questions that come up when somebody moves toward you, and the opposite when they move away. Are they saying bye? Are they getting out of here? Are they bored with me? You can imagine the human tiger pacing back and forth on the stage.

Imagine somebody sitting in the second row on the left there, his experience is he likes me, he is interested, this is getting interesting. He does not like me. He likes me. It is a seesaw of irrelevant information, and quickly the audience figures that out, and then they tune out because they get annoyed. That was the problem with that, and it is a direct result of proprioception, which is arguably the sixth, but perhaps most important sense for human communication and connection.

How Leaders Can Become Powerful Speakers

For the people that are tuning in, because a lot of our audience are people in business roles and leaders and managers, people are thinking I would love to do some speaking. I would love to get over my fear of speaking. I would like to be a better speaker because, as Warren Buffett said, “It is the number one skill in business.” The most important thing in his long career. He was not good at it at the beginning, and a lot of people are not great at it at the beginning, but it is a skill you can learn and practice. When you do get better, I dare say that if you are in sales, your sales will increase.

If you are a leader, the quality of your leadership will increase. When you get paid to do it as part of your living, there is lots of financial reward as well as the reward of actually seeing people change in the moment because the spoken word is truly a transformational medium for anybody who has ever felt it. For anybody who is in that space, it is a good idea to leave the stage. Not every person who puts on an event will want you to do that, although I have never actually been told not to. I have sometimes left stages that were six feet high off the ground, where there is a long staircase down. Even in those environments, leaving the stage is quite an effective way to create a movement that helps people to engage even at a deeper level.

You cannot connect as an audience member with a speaker who gets down off the stage, walks up to you, and gets within four feet of you, because suddenly that speaker now is in your personal space, and you have to respond. I have shown this because one of my talks is about body language. I have shown this to audiences over and over again. You will see somebody who is looking down or looking away, and then I will go into that four-foot space and suddenly their head comes up, they are making eye contact. I say look, and everybody laughs because you can not respond that way. That is just the way we humans are wired. It is a missed opportunity if you do not work the room.

It is a missed opportunity for a public speaker to not work the room. Share on X

It is funny because in the pre-event tech check, we typically do it the day before, I will say to the person who is running the show and also the AV people, I am going to leave the stage at a minimum of two times. It may be more than that, but I have got two specific places in a typical talk where I am asking a question that I want them to engage with each other to answer.

I want to get out in the audience and get their responses and be able to engage with a debrief with them from there. All of that, from leaving the stage to that engagement to coming back to the stage, can take two or three minutes. It is not a heck of a lot of time, but it changes the dynamic in the room. The people who are sitting in the outlying spaces with their arms crossed suddenly realize, “This is actually about me.”

He might be coming for me. I’d better pay attention. I’d better connect. I’d better re-engage.

Some good advice to anybody who does that. Think what Nick is sharing is sage advice.

You will often find that you mentioned the AV people or the lighting folks. You will often find that you get some resistance on that. They say you cannot leave the stage because it is hard for our guys. I say let us just warn them. If they really give me a hard time, I will go and talk to the cameraman, and he will go, “No, it’s no problem. I will just throw it on my shoulder, and we will turn the lights up.” If they really go out of their way, I will slip the guy $20, and then it is all good.

It is a missed opportunity if you do not. The other belief that they have comes from the theater world. Audiences are not typically expected to take part. They are supposed to be there in the audience watching anonymously. What we call the fourth wall in the theater, which you do not break, is the wall between the actors and the audience. Play will do that just for the sake of breaking a rule, but mostly they do not. The best lighting traditionally has been to get the audience as dark as possible and as much light on the stage as possible because that makes for a good scene. The actor’s first job is to be seen and heard.

They have a prejudice toward leaving the audience in darkness, keeping a lot of light on the stage, even for speaking. I will say to them, let us turn the house lights up half, because then if I walk into the audience, they can see me, and I can see them. There is no reason for it to be totally dark. It used to be that when we projected slides, the lights had to be really low to be able to make the slides brighten up. Now with digital wonders, the slides can be easily brightened even in a fully lit room. There is no technical reason why we cannot do it.

Stories To Tell Yourself In The Face Of Uncertainty

There really isn’t even when they are using an IMAG camera, there are so many things. The best practice here is to make sure that you speak to the folks ahead of time. In the days before and the weeks before leading up to a talk, if you are planning to leave the stage, which you should do, then let them know. That way, they can make adjustments and be your partner in that experience to make it the best they can for the audience, as opposed to getting any resistance. I want to come back to business and the environment of business that we are seeing. We really lean into what the challenges are that leaders are having right now.

What are the challenges that everybody, no matter what your role, individual contributor, CEO, whoever it might be, deals with right now? Uncertainty is the word that comes up over and over. Are you hearing that as well, Nick, that uncertainty is? When I wrote the book Pivot in 2016, nobody was using the word pivot except to describe. It’s my moment of embarrassment, so I’m not going to tell anybody about that. I wish I had a penny for the number of times people have used the word pivot since the pandemic. We wrote a book called Change Proof, where it was all about leveraging uncertainty. Trying to cash in on this craze for uncertainty. Are you seeing the same thing? Are you hearing the same on your end?

The way I come at it is from storytelling. When we grapple with change, nobody likes change, as my grandmother used to say, except wet babies. Everybody resists change. There is a particular story that we like to tell that tells people that they are going to be okay. They are going to learn how to cope with the change that is upon them. The term for that story is stranger in a strange land, meaning you land, or you wake up, or you find yourself with a new set of conditions. The rules have changed. The competitive landscape has changed. Whatever the business conditions are that you face, they have suddenly changed. What you have to do is face the uncertainty, bewilderment, and dislocation that that causes you and learn how to master the new situation.

That is uncomfortable, and it takes time. By telling the story of how people have coped with change, we can help them get through it. Whenever that change gets so extreme that it feels like chaos, then that simple change story will not work. We need a different story to tell, a more complicated story about how we can bring order to apparently chaotic settings. That is where I think we are now, post-pandemic.You may recall that before the pandemic, the issue that everybody was talking about was, “Who is going to come along and digitize my business?”

It was a change message. “My industry is going to be digitized. Is it going to be me who does it, or is somebody like Microsoft going to come and do it to me? Is that going to be a bad day for us? We have to be ready for that.” The pandemic happened. There was even a call that, “There is no point in doing any strategic planning anymore because the world is so chaotic. We do not know what is going to happen. Why plan? We are just going to respond in the moment.” That was actually a serious meme for six months or so. I think sanity has returned, and we are back to planning. That sense that the level of change is really high makes it hard to plan. It is stressful for employees. Employees are burned out.

There’s this whole sense that the business conditions are tougher than they have ever been. Yet we are not in a war. Business conditions in World War II were tougher than they are now. Our experience of it is that our world has reached a level of chaos, a level of uncertainty that we are just struggling with in our day-to-day operations. That causes a great strain on our employees. I would say yes, absolutely. That is an issue that we are all facing.

I am really putting you on the spot here. I am going to ask you, based on what you said, what is an effective story to tell in this world of change for most people, or a generation that is adults in the world of work, which no longer includes the Greatest Generation. There are still some people from the greatest generation who are still working, no doubt. Yet it is a fraction of a percentage. If you did not live through World War II, if you did not work during World War II, you have nothing to go on as a memory for today. For the people who are experiencing it, we are constantly talking to people about their levels of resilience, and we see how much burnout there really is.

Part of that burnout is that people are actually overloaded. There is no space between their load and their limits. They have no margin for error, like 99% all the time. If you are a leader and they come into a workshop environment with us, what is a way to help them find a story that will help lead people through this? The one thing that you and I both know, if we could project ourselves 50 years into the future, I can say one thing I know with absolute certainty that I would be saying to myself or someone like me or anybody, “Do not worry so much.”

That would be what I would say. “Do not worry so much. Everything is going to be a lot better than you could imagine.” I know this because if you were alive and living through World War II and you ended up 50 years hence, you would go back and say, “This is dark, this is tough. We are going to be okay.” Knowing that that is the truth, I’m literally going to say that, you have to help your teams now seize the moment here. Where is the opportunity for growth? Where is the opportunity for learning?

Where is the opportunity for your own personal development, as well as the development of how we serve the community of people we call our customers? How do we help them craft a story that does not sound like BS, that does not miss the mark? I apologize at the beginning because I know that is a really difficult thing, but I know what a genius you are. Maybe in this moment, we can capture a little lightning in a bottle for some people tuning in.

I actually do have a sense of the kinds of stories you need to tell. I do not know what a particular audience’s version of this is going to be, but I can point them in a direction. You need to draw deep on a moment in your life. You can go to a moment in history. You could go back to World War II, or you could go back to some other time when people thought the world was going to end or change so much that it was going to be unrecognizable. The best kinds of stories come from your own personal biography. You need to reach deep and find a moment when you thought the world was ending, when the chaos was all around you, and figure out what got you through that moment.

Most people who have been on this planet for more than 30 years have had an experience like that, a moment when they thought all was lost or the proverbial you-know-what was hitting the fan in a way they had never seen before. Yet they got through because here they are tuning in. This experience is near universal. It is a matter of relating that story in a way that is compelling. You have the message that we are going to get through this one, too. Entrepreneurs all have one of these stories. They have all had the catastrophic near-failure of a business. That is the story that perhaps they could tell. It is best if it is real for you, and it is a real experience because you need to bring the emotions.

You need to feel comfortable telling the human side of it, of how desperate you felt or how lost you felt or how out of control things seemed at the time. You got through somehow. What did you reach down deep to grab that kept you going one way or another? That is the story that people need to hear. There is another piece to it, if I can add, which is one of the things I am seeing with audiences all the time and hearing from meeting planners, and I think it is a phenomenon of the online world we live in now, we are more connected than ever, and yet we feel more alone.

Public speakers must feel comfortable telling the human side of their story. Reveal your vulnerabilities and share how you overcame each one. Share on X

That is everybody. That is a universal experience. How do we get ourselves to that place? Why would we do that to ourselves? The effect is that audiences want to be seen. They want to be acknowledged. Employees want to be acknowledged. They want to know that their role in the company or their journey through life is not passing completely unacknowledged and unseen. A key part of telling that story is to say, “I went through this thing, and I survived, and this is how we are going to survive.” It is also connecting with the audience and saying, “You are going to survive because I know you and I know you have what it takes.”

It’s allowing yourself as a speaker or a storyteller to connect with the audience in a very real way to say, “This is what you have been through, and I know you have what it takes to make it,” is really important these days because people feel lost. They feel unseen. They feel disconnected. We can say as much as we want that it is bizarre in a world where I can connect with anybody in a millisecond, but that is the reality.

Discussion Wrap-up And Closing Words

Especially in a world where remote work and hybrid work are still such a thing. That goes back to your proprioception ideas as well, because so often people are connecting, relating, speaking through this little square box here. This is a great conversation to land the plane. I would venture to say it will not be the last conversation that you and I have in this format because I already know people are going to be clamoring for more of what you have to say. I do not typically do this. The way that you and I first connected was when I was a guest on your show. I would love for you to tell people about your show and where they can hear more conversations from you directly.

Thanks for that. I started because a really smart marketing guy named David Meerman Scott said back in 2007, “Nick, you should write a blog.” I said, “What is a blog? That sounds stupid.

He said, “You should do a vlog.” You are like, “What is a vlog?”

I did the blog for a while. It happened exactly like that. I thought, “I should do this video thing. “That is also a blog somehow. It was just a heck of a lot of fun and a chance to connect with people. It is on my website, PublicWords.com, easy to find words with a D, not public works. It is called Just One Question. I keep it simple and easy. The idea of connecting through communications has been a joy to me since 2007, and that first blog way back when.

I love where we ended up taking the conversation because if there is one thing that I again would hope, not just hope, but expect and anticipate, it would be that 50 years from now, the spoken word that a human being speaks to another human being will not have lost its effect. That is not to say that we will not be speaking to robots, as I imagine we will, and they will be speaking to us. I imagine they will be doing that as well. We have a bit of a heightened awareness around how important it is that this human-to-human contact exists.

As you said, if you are a leader or if you want to be a leader someday, one of the things that you will need to be masterful at will be to tell a story, share information with someone else in a way that meets the moment that we are describing right now, would inspire them to want to continue forward, to feel like even despite the fact that it is uncertain and there was a lot of darkness around us, there is no question.

There is absolutely no question that there is a light in the distance. What that light will be and what it will look like. It is like that play that is still playing so many places around the world, Annie. The sun will come out tomorrow. Why the story and the song and the whole thing are so meaningful is that they bring us back to some essential truth, which is that we do not know if it is going to rain or be sunny tomorrow anywhere in the world.

We do know one thing, though, that the sun is going to come up tomorrow. When we are dealing with what we are, all of us, I think we have to be able to speak to others in a way that is truthful, not trying to sell them some false story simply because we are not always willing to be truly transparent about certain aspects of our own life journey. The more we are willing to do that, I think, the more people will be able to learn from and buy into those experiences so that we can all collectively go, “Things are going to be okay.”

Annie is a great example because she has nothing. She has lost everything that we would normally consider essential to life. She has lost her mother and father. She is an orphan. She is growing up in a horrible place with a nasty person in charge. She is not fed much. She does not get a bath very often. Yet it is her resilience. It is her hope. She believes that the sun will come out tomorrow, which keeps her going and ultimately leads to the happy ending. Spoiler alert. For those of you who have not seen it yet.

Nick, I could talk to you for days. I apologize to my audience for cutting this off. We will look at doing another part of this as well. Nick, you are amazing. Thank you so much for being a part of the show.

Adam, thank you. Back at you. Great to chat.

—

I absolutely love speaking to Dr. Nick Morgan. Nick, as I call him, is just such a grounded guy. There is a peace that he emanates because he is comfortable in his skin, grounded in his thoughts, and in his approach to things. I love his perspective. I love the way he phrases things. I am a fan of language, a huge proponent of effective storytelling, both as a speaker and as a facilitator.

Just in a way that I learn from other people. It is so often the case that how I have learned and how I have remembered the things I have learned, more importantly than learning, is to actually remember the things so that you can use them in life, business, or what have you. Storytelling has been the most effective tool for me to remember information as well as to be able to convey certain things to others.

He is a master storyteller. He is a person who teaches a storytelling class at Harvard to business executives and others who just want to have even more impact and influence in the world and do positive things. I highly recommend Nick’s work and finding out more about what he does, which you can find out in the show notes. I would also love it if you enjoyed this conversation and that you would take a few moments to rate the show on the scale that they provided.

It’s like five stars or less, but however you felt about this show, if you could take a moment to rate it, it is very powerful in terms of the algorithm and how many people get to tune in to what you just got to tune into. If you have a friend, family member, or colleague who would benefit from hearing this, please share this episode with those folks. Let us know your comments. You can go to AdamMarkel.com/Podcast to leave a comment there or connect on LinkedIn. I just want to thank you again for being a part of this community, for tuning in, for sharing, and sending us your good vibes as well.

 

Important Links

• Dr. Nick Morgan
• Dr. Nick Morgan on LinkedIn
• Dr. Nick Morgan on Facebook
• Dr. Nick Morgan on Instagram
• Can You Hear Me?
• Pivot
• Change Proof
• Adam Markel Podcast
• Adam Markel on LinkedIn

 

About Nick Morgan

Dr. Nick Morgan is one of America’s top communication speakers, theorists, and coaches. A passionate teacher, he is committed to helping people find clarity in their thinking and ideas – and then delivering them with panache. He has been commissioned by Fortune 50 companies to write for many CEOs and presidents. He has coached people to give Congressional testimony, to appear in the media, and to deliver unforgettable keynote speeches.

And he has himself spoken, led conferences, and moderated panels at venues around the world. His latest book is Can You Hear Me?, on the perils of virtual communication, published by Harvard in 2018. He is at work on a new book, to be published in 2026, on The Embodied Voice, about claiming and perfecting your unique leadership voice.