Nick Morgan

Dr. Nick Morgan is one of America’s top communication 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 on the Today Show, and to take on the investment community.  He has worked widely with political and educational leaders.  And he has himself spoken, led conferences, and moderated panels at venues around the world.

Nick’s methods, which are well-known for challenging conventional thinking, have been published worldwide.  His acclaimed book on public speaking, Working the Room:  How to Move People to Action through Audience-Centered Speaking, was published by Harvard in 2003 and reprinted in paperback in 2005 as Give Your Speech, Change the World:  How to Move Your Audience to Action.  His new book on authentic communications, Trust Me, was published by Jossey-Bass in January 2009.

Nick served as editor of the Harvard Management Communication Letter from 1998 – 2003.  He has written hundreds of articles for local and national publications.  Nick is a former Fellow at the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. 

After earning his PhD. in literature and rhetoric, Nick spent a number of years teaching Shakespeare and Public Speaking at the University of Virginia, Lehigh University, and Princeton University.  He first started writing speeches for Virginia Governor Charles S. Robb and went on to found his own communications consulting organization, Public Words, in 1997. 

Nick attributes his success to his honest and direct approach that challenges even the most confident orators to rethink how they communicate.

Nick Morgan's Blog Posts:

Rick Perry and the Blank Mind

• Communications for Managers

  Managers and their direct reports today live in a world of information overload and constant change. And yet it is more important than ever that managers communicate clearly and effectively in real time the changing goals and needs of their companies. Flabby, ineffective communications are more than a time-waster – they can mean lost sales, confused employees, and reduced profits.
  
  Whether you're speaking with an external audience, or briefing one of your direct reports in the hallway on the way to an important meeting, getting the message right and clear is essential to the survival of your company.
  
  Nick works with managers to analyze the essence of management communication – how it works, how to ensure that leadership and teams are aligned, and how to see that good communications spread throughout a company. Using humour, video illustrations, and audience interaction, Nick makes the mysteries of clear communications simple and fun.

• Communication for Effective Leaders

  Are you a charismatic leader? Without strong communication ability, leaders cannot succeed for long. Customers, employees, shareholders – all take their measure of the leaders of an organization by how well they communicate.
  
  Nick reveals the power of combining non-verbal communication with content to build trust and credibility. He de-mystifies this essential quality for leadership with humor and clarity.
  
  The essence of effective leadership lies in getting people to act on your vision. And people won't act on your words unless they find your communications compelling. But there are many kinds of compelling communications, and Nick works with the audience to find and develop that uniquely personal style that ensures that when you're communicating, you're doing it with integrity and purpose.

• The Two Conversations

  Do you want to be a powerful communicator, someone whose words make people pay attention every time? Every communication is two conversations, the one you're having on the surface – the content – and the non-verbal one you're having whether you are aware of it or not. If those two conversations are aligned, and your message is strong, you can be a powerful communicator. But most people betray themselves with their second conversations – their 'body language.'
  
  How do you master that second conversation? Most studies of 'body language' have focused on particular gestures and their meanings. But in fact gestures can have many meanings, and memorizing lists of gestures is a poor way to learn to communicate.
  
  The Two Conversations demonstrates how to analyze every important communication to decide upon its key meaning, how to 'read' the second, or non-verbal messages coming from the people you're trying to reach, and how to ensure that your non-verbal signals are reinforcing your own content and the desired outcome.
  
  Nick has studied and coached people in non-verbal communications for 19 years and draws upon his experience to describe 5 polarities by which to understand the non-verbal conversation and how to turn it to your advantage whether in one-on-one chats, important meetings and negotiations, or public speeches.

• Story Telling and Authenticity

  How do you craft your message for maximum persuasive power? Audiences today must sift through thousands of demands upon their attention to decide what grabs them. How can you be amongst the chosen few?
  
  Consumers have an extraordinary ability to separate the hyped from the authentic. How can you stand out, be persuasive, and tell a story that's fundamentally true? The demands upon individuals and organizations for sophisticated, compelling, and authentic public communications are unrelenting.
  
  Nick draws upon ancient secrets of story telling and modern communications research to reveal how to change the world with your public words.

• Nick - Such a pleasure working with you during our offsite last week.  It was a perfect complement to the other work we are doing and I have already begun to put what I learned to good practice!

  Division Head, United States Army

• Dr. Nick Morgan was one of the highlights of our March, 2010 Annual Convention, with a tour de force keynote address that accomplished the seemingly impossible: providing an effective, interactive, how-to primer on public speaking to an audience of over 400 attendees, ranging from sales people to chief executives. He blended humor, science, theatrics and excellent historical examples. I don’t know if anyone else could have pulled this off, but Nick Morgan had our audience’s attention riveted for the entire two hours. Nick was a pleasure to work with and I am positive we will be calling on him again. This was a masterful seminar. Bravo!

  ICCFA

• And thank you again for doing such a great job for us. The session was truly engaging and useful and fun, and the feedback and commentary on it was uniformly fantastic (making me realize I should have booked more time plus a breakout session).   If you are interested, I'd love to have you back for another one of our big national events -- next May, our Leadership Event.

   

  CIO Magazine

• Thank you so much for joining us yesterday and for your contribution to the program. You were able to energize the room in a powerful way and I think we all took away some very valuable lessons about how we carry ourselves when we speak to other people. This is such an important topic across disciplines and I feel so lucky that we were able to have you there yesterday.

   

  Harvard University Graduate School of Design

• Nick, this has been my most valuable session at SXSW this year. It's exciting when you learn you have the key ingredients to make something great - then even more exciting to meet the master chefs who can help you put it together. Thank you, and keep cooking.

  SXSW 2010

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  March 2011

  The King's Speech: Lessons for Leaders

  The King’s Speech tells the story of the relationship between the reluctant King George VI of England and his speech coach, Lionel Logue. George VI had a severe stutter that nearly ended his public career before it began. But when his older brother Edward abdicates the throne, George must master public speaking. Renowned speaking coach Nick Morgan has distilled five key lessons from the film for leaders who must overcome their own challenges in order to be successful communicators.

  
  
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  February 2011

  How toTell Great Business Stories

  Here’s how to tap into the power of great storytelling to strengthen your own speeches, presentations, meetings, and conversations.

  
  
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  December 2010

  How to Read Body Language

  Every communication is two conversations, content and body language. And body language is often more revealing and truthful than content, especially in divulging what other people are really thinking. But how do you follow that second conversation? If you try to monitor it consciously, you rapidly become overwhelmed with ambiguous information. Did that twitch of the eye mean something significant, or was it just a twitch? In this brief eBook, author Nick Morgan shows you how to keep track of both conversations.

  
  
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  October 2010

  7 Steps to a Great Speech

  Public speaking is one of those mixed activities -- it’s both art and science, idea and fulfillment, content and delivery. The process makes most people anxious. Of all the tasks we face this is the one, that studies regularly show, we fear most. Here in this brief eBook are seven steps to take some of the anxiety out of the process of preparing and delivering a great presentation. Follow these steps, and you may even win that prize secretly coveted by all speakers: the standing ovation.

  
  
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  January 2009

  Trust Me: Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma

  Nick Morgan shows how anyone can be an effective speaker by presenting an image of authenticity and respect for their audience, whether in a group presentation or a one-on-one conversation. He presents a four-step process, perfected in his teaching at Harvard, that enables the reader to use their own personal speaking style while becoming a more persuasive and charismatic communicator and leader. The key to success is to train your body language to unconsciously align with your message.

  
  
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  February 2005

  Give Your Speech, Change the World

  Takes public speaking to a higher level with a new audience-centered approach that combines aspects of ancient Greek rhetorical practice with proven modern-day communication techniques.

  
  
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  April 2003

  Working the Room

  Do you remember the topic of the last speech you heard? If not, you're not alone. In fact, studies show that audiences remember only 10 to 30 percent of speech or presentation content. Given those bleak statistics, why do we give speeches at all?  We give them, says communications expert Nick Morgan, because they remain the most powerful way of connecting with audiences since ancient Greek times. But as we've evolved to a more conversational mode of public speaking, thanks to television, we have forgotten much of what the Greeks taught us about the nonverbal aspects of speech-giving: the physical connection with audiences that can create an almost palpable emotional bond.