Sometimes, the loudest messages are conveyed without using any words at all. Mark Cox chats with communication expert Dr. Nick Morgan about the subtle science of power cues and how they play out in the world of sales. In this episode, he explains how facial gestures, body language, and vocal cords override even conscious communication. He breaks down several tips for self-awareness and mastering non-verbal communication, making sales pitches more relatable and authentic. Dr. Nick also shares about three pivotal moments in his life: being inspired by the teachings of Dalai Lama, learning his father was gay, and having a near-death experience.
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The Loud Impact Of Power Cues With Dr. Nick Morgan
Team, what a great show that we have for you. We've all heard the platitudes that people make decisions emotionally and then they back it up with facts. That's how people make decisions. In this episode, we're talking with a global communication expert that has all the research associated with that concept. It's Dr. Nick Morgan. He's the Founder of Public Words Inc. He’s one of America's top communications and speech coaches.
He is a former fellow at Harvard Kennedy School of Government where he’s affiliated with the school's Center for Public Leadership. The book we’re discussing with Nick is Power Cues: The Subtle Science of Leading Groups, Persuading Others, and Maximizing Your Personal Impact. I also loved his book, Can You Hear Me?: How to Connect with People in a Virtual World. We don't get to talk about that in this episode the concept from is so incredibly powerful for anybody interacting with other human beings.
The concepts most of our communications unconscious. Our conscious brains can handle something like 40 bits of information a second, but are unconscious minds handle 11 million bits of information per second. There are these two conversations taking place in any form of communication, the conscious one, and the unconscious one. We talked about these Power Cues that help with the unconscious conversation.
Nick breaks it down in the book to variety different chapters, but he talks about these seven Power Cues self-awareness, nonverbal communication, reading others unconscious signals, mastering your own voice, communicating as a leader, using your intuition effectively, and then synchronizing minds. Putting all of it together. Team, this is a great conversation. We talked about all of this leads to what we do every day is professional sales.
People will talk about why it's so difficult to build trust and connection in a short period of time with someone. Talk about real practical exercises to prepare for that next live conversation or that big meeting. I had this one highlighted as an interesting podcast a long time ago when I read Nick’s book. I'm so glad with the way things turned out for this. I hope you are, too. By the way, a pleasant reminder, team. If you like this episode, tell your friends and please like and subscribe to the show. Here's Dr. Nick Morgan.
Nick, welcome to the show. It's so great to meet you.
It’s a great pleasure to be here. Happy to take some time with you to talk about, I presume, communications. It’s one of my favorite subjects.
Three Pivotal Moments In Dr. Nick’s Life
We think it has something to do with B2B selling, but it goes riveted and couldn't wait to get you on the show because somehow you hadn't been on my radar. I first read, Can You Hear Me?: How to Connect with People in a Virtual World. Given the fact it's 2025, I probably read that a little late, but it’s a fantastic book. You referenced Power Cues frequently in the book, The Subtle Science of Leading Groups, Persuading Others, and Maximizing Your Personal Impact. I was hoping we could focus in a little bit on Power Cues. It’s an incredibly riveting book. Most of things that was most impactful, Nick, was what led you to write it? What happened to you when you were seventeen? Maybe we can talk a little bit about the trigger for this.
I was happy go lucky seventeen-year-old and not thinking about matters of communications in any deep way. Three things happened to me that led me to start focusing on communications and indeed then it became my career in life and obsession. The first was, I read a book about the Dalai Lama and he became a hero of mine. The second was, I learned my father was gay and the third was I died. Maybe I should take those three in order, if I may.
I read a book about the Dalai Lama. He became a hero. When I had a chance to hear him speak a few years later, understand this was pre-Dalai Lama social media Rockstar character. He was a relatively unknown Buddhist thinker, but he had come to the University of Virginia, where I was a graduate student because he was interested in comparing Buddhism and Western medicine. He had a contact there. A doctor who was doing research and the subject. This was a public seminar he gave while he was there, but I was very excited because in my mind he was a rockstar.
I go to the hall where he was to be. I noticed it's small. They're all these seating for 35 to 40 people. We're a bit crowded because other people like me wanted to sit at the feet of the master and he wasn't there. That was the second thing I noticed. Five minutes went by, 10 minutes went by, and 20 minutes, went by and he wasn’t there. At this point, were muttering amongst ourselves and wondering how long do you wait for a man who's on his fourteenth reincarnation? It wasn't clear.
Finally, 45 minutes goes by, and he shows up. He comes running in all apologetic and out of breath. He says, “Sorry to keep you waiting. I better say something amazing.” He sits down and just looks at us. He doesn't say anything for one minute of stage time, and two minutes of stage time. Anybody who's presented knows how long that is. Can you imagine just sitting there looking at the audience? Four minutes of stage time, at that point, I was timing it. I was curious to see how long it would go and he started talking.
What had happened in those four minutes to me was life-changing. I had the feeling that he had looked at me and somehow, he had connected with me in a way that felt very deep. It felt like it had changed me. When I talked to people afterwards in the audience, they said the same thing. “No, he looked at me and changed me.” We had this absurd non-Buddhist argument about which one of us he looked at. The point was he had some ability to connect with people that seem very profound and I didn't understand it. I wanted to know more. How did that work? It was clearly a nonverbal communication.
What was so powerful about that? Could I do the same thing? It felt very profound. Back to age seventeen. I have to give my dad a present for Christmas. I gave him a book that I knew we hadn't read because it had been published. That was my concern because he was a bookish man and well-read and I wanted to get him something that he couldn't possibly have read. In this case, it was a book by E.M Forster that had just been published because it had been embargoed for many years after his death.
I only knew E.M Forster from high school reading, A Passage to India, which was required reading in those days. I don't know if they still read it, but so I knew a new book. I had a vague idea that it was his autobiographical novel, and it had been embargoed because it was about homosexuality in an era when that was illegal in England still. This was in the back of my mind, but it wasn't the primary thought. I wrapped up the book, put it under the tree, and then when Dad opened it on Christmas day, he gave me a funny look just for a split second. In that funny look, a wheel turned in my head and I said, “My dad is gay.” I just knew it.
Nonverbal communication back and forth and somehow you know this.
Yes, and he didn't come out to the world for ten years after that. When he finally came out, he called me up and said, “I have something important I’m going to say to you.” He announced this the world to me first. I went up to see him. We were walking and talking. He was hemming and hawing, and saying, “This is hard to say.” I finally said, “Dad, I know you're gay. Get over it. It's not a big deal.” He said, “How did you know?” Suddenly, where how odd it sounded.
You have to get to know somebody well to know what their baseline of communication is.
I said, “That look you gave me years ago on Christmas Day.” He had no memory of it. The thought process I had was, “Good heavens. What is the power of nonverbal communications? What do we exchanging we humans that so profound that my dad could let slip to me a secret he had kept all his life?” It was a very complicated thing in those days and yet, not even be aware that he had done it. That was the second piece of non-verbal information that I needed to know more about.
The final one was this is the public service message in our episode, which is, I was tobogganing with friends again at age seventeen. Don't toboggan. If it's important to be able to steer because toboggans are very clumsy things. You can only steer by leaning. You might have a rope you can pull on. It’s very hard to steer. In this case, we didn't make it around a necessary turn. I crashed into a tree. I fractured my skull and I was in a coma for a week. I'm very fortunate to be here because of some great neuro surgeons. Thank you.
When I awoke, I had died briefly during that five-day week-long period just for a couple of minutes. I'd been brought back to life with the paddles just like in the movies. They give you a test when you wake up. A quick, do you have what's called threefold awareness? Do you know the year that you are in? Do you know where you are? Do you know who's President? That's usually the question they ask you. It's just to see if you still got basic orientation to the world around you and I did.
I passed that test, but it became clear with the days following as I recovered that something else had happened that was far more profound for which there was no test and I couldn't articulate it. Nobody asked me about it, which was I could no longer do what all of us, all of your readers and viewers can do automatically without thinking about it, which is we can read the body language and the emotional state that the body language suggests of people that we know well. An awful lot of time is spent in the media, in the world of experts like me on body language and train people to read the body language of relative strangers. The truth is, we're bad at it.
Except for Paul Eckert.
Paul is pretty good, but that was his life's work. He trained the CIA and the FBI and people like that. All kinds of spies to try to be better at it. After all the work that they did in terms of detecting a liar, which was very important in their minds when they're interrogating a witness, let's say, or a prisoner. Is that person telling the truth or not? They were able to get accuracy only up to 51%. That's 1% better than chance.
I wouldn't want to bet the farm on that. I don't know about you, but those aren't good Vegas odds. We're not very good at it. The problem is, and this is the point, you have to get to know somebody well to know what their baseline of communications is. If I walk into Roman, I'm waving my hands around. Does that mean I'm all excited or am I just always that way? Those are the kinds of things you don't learn until you know somebody.
We're very good at reading the body language of people that we know. We're not good at reading the body language of strangers, but what had happened because of the accident, for some reason was, I had lost that ability. When I looked at people, I could see they were making faces but I couldn't connect to that automatic sense of, “She's happy. He’s frustrated or angry. She's sad. Whatever.” I started staring at my friends and asking them and making them feel very odd and uncomfortable saying, “Are you angry? Are you happy? Are you sad? What's going on?”
It took about a year for me to retrain myself and probably just to recover. The brain heals over time and the result was that I became fascinated and made it eventually my life long study, to be able to decode body language in a way that was conscious and I could codify, talk about, and think about, or as most of us, as I say, are experts but we're unconscious experts.
When a spouse or a family member, if you have kids, when you're kid walks into room, you don't think to yourself. You just know it. That's your unconscious mind. It's much faster than the conscious mind. It immediately goes to the read of that situation of that person because you know them. That's the basis of nonverbal communications, and what I was eager to retrain myself to understand.
Folks, you can see why I was so riveted to the book very early on. Everything that Nick's explained, either the introduction or the first chapter, it becomes riveting. In that same area, you said, Nick, most of our communication is indeed unconscious and our conscious brains can handle something like 40 bits of information per second. Our unconscious minds can handle 11 million bits of information per second, so the conscious brain and unconscious brain.
Communicating With The Unconscious Mind
All of this flabbergasting 10 million of those bits of information per second were all visual. We're pulling this all in visually. One of the reasons I was so excited to speak to you is there's lots of information in our world, in the selling world about helping people and working with people and how people make decisions emotionally then back it up with data.
Frankly, it's pretty high-level advice. When I dove into Power Cues, the facts, the data, and the research. It’s something like you make your decisions, emotionally or unconsciously and it takes a long time for your conscious mind to catch up even sometimes up to nine seconds. Unconsciously, you make a decision. You're acting on it. You don't realize you've made the decision.
That's correct. Therein lies both the challenge for communication because if you're a B2B seller or anybody, trying to communicate. You need to talk to that unconscious mind because that's where the decision is made. All of us are trained and we spent our lives focusing on conscious stuff, our expertise. I want to tell you about my IT system that I think you should purchase or buy materials or the things that you should buy.
I'll give you conscious reasons why you should do that. If I have been connected with your unconscious mind, I haven’t created trust and made an emotional connection, then the decision is over. It's done. It's made before I ever get to all that lovely conscious data I have to talk to you about. That's the reason why this is important to study and why it matters in these situations.
Inspiration From The Music Of Beatles And Bee Gees
The heart of the book is some things we can think about to help with that. One of the things, just looking at your background, it jumps out at me. You talked about how the Dalai Lama had made this amazing connection with you and 35 or 40 other people in a room. Each of you felt like somehow, he was speaking to you personally and directly.
I can't help but notice. You’ve got some very cool Beatles paraphernalia behind you and you start to think of what happened with those four people, where somehow, they were making an insane emotional connection with the entire world. First of all, you must be a fan. Have you ever connected those or thought about that? How did they turn the whole world upside down and create a love affair with the whole world through music and also badly recorded music.
Compared to what we know now. A single monaural sound is a strange concept to us. We're used to multitracking and everything else. The Beatles had, let's call it an unfair advantage, which is that music. It goes directly to those emotional centers. In a sense, it's a way of connecting with people that bypasses the intellectual aspects of human connection and goes right to emotion because music hits, what we call the back part of the lizard part informally, but the part of our brain that isn't the prefrontal cortex were executive conscious decisions are made.
They connected with those teenagers and I was one instantly and unconsciously. We couldn't help ourselves as it were. There was something about energy of the music. You can get quite technical about certain kinds of music and why it connects. I'll just give you one very little. For instance, a rising melody is something that connects with us positively and gives us a good feeling. It makes us happy. One of the Beatles earliest hits was a song called, those of you old enough to remember, you'll recognize it. I Want to Hold Your Hand.
The innovative thing about that was when Paul McCartney sang that line, “I want to hold your hand,” and the hand note was an octave higher and an octave jump. That was very unusual in pop music in those days. It still is. It's quite a leap to make just vocally. Usually, singers don't give themselves something that difficult, but that huge leap.
Imagine a tune that goes up note by note and step by step. If it jumps an octave, that's eight steps as it were eighth notes. It hits you with a powerful force of positive energy. It makes you feel good like that. There were a number technical reasons why their music was so uplifting, fun, exciting, and connected with us so well. Overall, they brought energy, excitement, and all sorts of useful emotional connections with their fan base.
Every generation can connect with the Beatles. That's the unbelievable thing about it. When we were growing up, we had one of those very large piece of furniture stereo systems that took up half the wall and we only had three albums. Two of them were Beatles albums. We were a musical family with piano and the rest of it.
I'm a musician still, but it's amazing to me. We were down in Vegas seeing Love a few years back. When that music came up again, I started tearing up and I had no idea why. I was happy of those kinds of good things, but the emotion just overtook me. Something like Eleanor Rigby isn't on that pot happy sight. Suddenly, it's targeting your heartstrings for some amazing reasons. It’s fabulous.
If you walk into a room with a poor posture, people will think you lack confidence and disengaged.
By the way, without going down to tangent, you start to think of the other almost Beatle Mania. It was the Bee Gees in the height of the disco era. At their peak or their height, they sang falsetto, which is an octave plus. It's at the highest range and that certainly had a connection with a good part of the universe at that point in time that became enormously successful for a period of time, that type of singing.
There's a useful lesson in there for your B2B communicators, by the way. Broadly speaking, without getting into too much detail here. We talk at a conversational pitch, but I am speaking certain notes that we could find on the piano just as you are. If I held, then we could go find that on the piano. Our speaking could be noted just like music.
Very broadly speaking, as you go up, you signal certain things to your audience. As you go down, you signal certain other things. I mentioned that going up in music is positive. It also has a double-edged aspect to it, which is as we indicate excitement and energy, our voices go up in pitch and this is speaking as well as singing. It also indicates stress, tension, and anxiety. What happens is, if you're tense, let's say, you're going into important meeting and this is the big pitch. This is where the client is going to say yes or, no.
You're stressed out. You get that fight or flight, that adrenaline response. One of the things that does in addition to making your heartbeat fast and your palms clammy and all the other things that symptoms that you know, is it a tightens up your vocal course. That pushes your voice up and one of the extraordinary things about people is we are very good at hearing tension in other people's voices, even if we don't know them. This is one of the exceptions to what we were talking about earlier that you have to know people well to read their emotional state.
We recognize tension invoices. If you walk into that room, you normally talk like this when you're relaxed, but walking into the room because there's so much at stake, you've got the adrenaline flowing. You start talking like this. Your pitch goes up just a little bit. Even though you don't know me, you're starting to hear the tension in that voice, and that's going to make you uneasy. You're going to think, “What's wrong with this guy? He's nervous.”
The way you read nervousness is you think, “He doesn't know what he's talking about.” Right away from the start, even though you're not consciously aware of it, that nervous energy is causing you to come across as less confident and less authoritative than you would otherwise. Becoming aware of that is extremely important. What I recommend to people is, for these high stakes moments. Record yourself on your cell phone talking just for 30 seconds when you relaxed so you know what your voice should sound like.
Play that in your ear before you go into the meeting. That will help ground you and you'll think, “That what I should sound like.” Instead of walking in and suddenly going with a high pitch voice, “Hi, Mr. Smith. Great to me.” You say, “Hi, Mr. Smith. Great to me you,” with a low voice, and you come across this confident and relaxed and self-assured.
What a great tip. Thank you for that. Nick, in our world, that's not just for the high stakes meeting that big discussion or presentation. Portion of the people who are reading do demand generation. They reach out into their target market and interrupt somebody in the middle of their day. Whether it's by phone or email. They're trying to get a meeting or trying to have a live conversation with someone to quickly share their value proposition and understand if that person's got the problem that they can solve for or help with.
We train a lot on this, but it's very difficult to inoculate against fight or flight when you're doing that because you're dealing the phone twenty times and you have no idea when somebody's going to connect with you, and they are on the line. There's a mediate imposter syndrome. If you're 23 years old and the person on the other end of the line, you used an IT example, but it’s the VP of IT for a large telecommunications firm. That nervousness comes across and the recipient doesn't want to be speaking to somebody nervous and anxious because as you point out in the book, we mirror the effects of other people. It makes us a little bit uncomfortable.
Using Power Cues To Make A Good First Impression
By the way, how do we exert that leadership? How do we become the leader in the room or exert our confidence in leadership? It's talking about how these unconscious cues define a leader in any situation. Team, we're not going to have time to go through all of them, but when you read the book, in chapter one, it’s knowing your own power cues, taking charge of your nonverbal communication, reading the unconscious signals of others, and mastering your own voice. We talked a little bit about that, about pitch and tone. That's beautifully laid out in the book.
Also, breathing was so important. Singers and musicians, we’ll talk a little bit about that. Communicating with the leader then using your intuition effectively and synchronizing minds. Nick, I know your time is so valuable, but given time here, may we talk about a couple of these? As helpful tips for people walking away from this. The first one is self-awareness, taking an inward look.
You used a very good example there, coord your voice when you're feeling great. Listen to it. It puts you in the frame of mind. What are some other tips on the self-awareness starting with ourself? A lot of people are very uncomfortable with these things that we're talking about. Things like public speaking or big presentation. What do we do internally to help ourselves with that first?
Power Cues: One of the extraordinary things about people is their ability to hear tension in other people’s voices even if they do not know them.
You want to think about a couple of things. First and foremost is, how do I show up when I first walk into the room? That first meeting and that first impression is so key. A simple example of this is something I blame on one of these objects. It’s a mobile phone in a very nice case and I'll turn sideways to show this. The thing that happens with a mobile phone is, we tend to pitch our heads forward and our shoulders round, so we lean into the phone. We spent a lot of time like this. I was at the airport. They were 80 people waiting at our gate and I looked around all and 78 or 79 of them had their heads down.
It's unbelievable, isn't it?
The 80th was me. I looked around and I thought, “How sad,” then I was soon in the phone like everybody else, so the number became 80. Why is that a problem? It's because if I walk into a room like this, and I've tested this with audiences many times and done a research project on it that substantiated this. People think all kinds of thoughts, but they're all negative. They say, “You feel bad. You lack confidence. You're disengaged. You feel subordinate. Not powerful.”
They're all kinds of feelings associated and ways that people read this posture, but none of them is ever positive. The first thing I say to people is, “Go back to the wall. I'm going to stand in front of the Beatles here.” Find a wall somewhere in the men's room or the lady from, and put your heels against the wall or butt against the wall, or shoulders against wall, or head against the wall, so you're standing up straight. You will convey a very different impression in very important person or team that you're meeting and you will find it strange. That's what everybody reports.
They say, “I feel weirdly upright. Don't I look strange?” I'll say no. For the first time, you look confident and you're taking up your full height. That's the important thing. We humans are incredibly good at unconsciously reading the difference between this and this. Even though I've only shrunk the quarter of an inch or something like that.
We read somebody who takes up their full space as somebody who has power agency. Not in an arrogant way, but in the way they're entitled to. Whereas somebody who shrunk like this, we say, “That person is not fully present. They lack confidence. They're unhappy and subordinate, on and on.” That first impression in person is extraordinarily important in that sense. That's why I'd say where it starts.
It's such a great tip. Some of us were athletes. We're natural slow slouchers because of some of the sports we spent years playing. I was a goalie in hockey and always about rolling over. It wasn't like now, it’s always been over. Every time I get fitness training, they're always saying, “We got to start by pulling everything back,” instead of this rolling over and crafting.
Let's look to the second one, the nonverbal communication and there's these thousands of nonverbal communications when we're enacting with someone else. There's two questions there, Nick. Oftentimes, we love to pick up on a couple of tips when I'm looking at someone else when I'm working with someone else. The second thing is about this misinterpretation of somebody else. There are people in the world that have a natural smile on their face. I married to one of those. Thank goodness, but I'm not.
I'm extremely pleasant, positive, and optimistic, but the natural state of my face when I'm relaxing is almost a frown. Yet, I'm funny, engaged, and positive all the time. If I'm not speaking, people misinterpret it, or if I'm in a room, they'll think I might be cross. I have to consciously put a little smile on my face even though it's not a natural thing for me. What are some tips so consciously, we don't go down the wrong path? When we're trying to assess what's going on with others, all about this trying to make sure we make a good impression. What are some tips we should consider?
The way about it is the first thing that has to happen between people is that we have to be open to each other. If we're closed off, in terms of our body language, then communication isn't even going to start. You need to think about what are the cues I can send out that I'm open because you alluded to the idea of mirror neurons. What happens is if I go in and I'm open, friendly, and clearly want to connect. That raises the likelihood at least that the other person will experience the same feelings and emotions out of unconscious level pretty quickly on their end.
That's the first step. It’s to make sure you're expressions and your body language are open. You mention an important one which is not having, what we call an RBF. I won't spell that one out because it's a rude phrase. Having a smile on your face, having a positive affect and there are four aspects to that. You want to think about raising your eyebrows from time to time, because that looks like you're asking the other person, how do you feel? What do you think? It brings the other person in.
If you replace fear with a positive mantra that you chant over and over internally, you reach into your unconscious mind and heal your fear and trauma.
You want to make sure your eyes aren't narrowed, but rather are open because when our eyes are slightly wider, you don't want to overdo it. Slightly wider shows interest in the other person, as you like the other person, then there's nodding and smiling. You don't need those four facial gestures all at once, but those are ways of signaling positive, openness, and connection.
What you want to do is test yourself. Ask your trusted colleague, what's my resting face like to your point? If it's an RBF phase, then you want to consciously work on making it more positive with any of those four things. In terms of your body language, very quickly when we think about where are hands are, on an horizontal axis. If I have my hands wide, they're open. As I bring my hands in front of my torso, then I'm closing down. This is self-protective.
What you see, what I videotape clients and give them feedback, I will say, “How did you feel?” They said, “I was open.” I'll say, “Let's look at the tape,” and 80% of the time, their hands are closing in front of their torso if they're speaking in a room publicly. That can be as few as six people or more. It feels like an actual presentation or you're on the spot to present. You feel self-conscious. It's a very natural thing to do to bring your hands in in front of your torso to self-protect because you feel like you’re on the spot.
The signal that sends to the audience of 6 or 600 is, “I am not open to you.” It's harder right from the start to connect. I train people to unconsciously get this habit down, which means you have to practice it in low stakes situations over and over again in order for it to become natural. When you walk into that high stakes situation, your unconscious mind is going to be saying, “Danger,” and the hands are going to come back in front of the torso to self-protect. It's hard to override. You need to practice it in low stake situation, as I say.
When you're at home, talking to loved ones, or to your family or with friends that you're comfortable with, force yourself. Practice doing keeping the hands open. First of all, you'll be surprised at the difference it makes if you're somebody who does a lot of self-protection. You'll find that you make warmer connections with people. Second, you'll gradually master this and become more comfortable with it. It's not natural.
Natural is to self-protect, but that cuts off the chance of connection between people. That's again, a simple way to begin thinking about it. My face has to signal open connection, a desire to connect with people. My body language has to signal a desire to connect with people. Those are the basics, so you need to monitor yourself to begin with, then you can look at other people that folks you're connecting with for similar signs.
If you're going in and you're open, smiling, and connecting and the other person has his arms tuck in. It this doesn't take a genius to say, “That person is still close to me. I need to figure out what's going on.” There are a number of strategies you can use to start to open that connection but you need to be aware of it. You need to be aware that the other person is closed off. Otherwise, you won't make the extra effort to try to connect. These are this beginning levels of understanding, but it's where you need to begin.
These are great for everybody reading. Folks, you can share that when you share the feedback on this episode. I'm just going to point back again, team, Power Cues: The Subtle Science of Leading Groups, Persuading Others, and Maximizing Your Personal Impact is loaded with these kinds of ideas. This is a must-read in my view, team. For anybody interacting with clients or prospects, or anybody interacting with other teammates, everybody should be reading this.
Addressing Imposter Syndrome In B2B Sales
One last question for Nick and then we'll wrap things up here. Nick, I had a final opportunity to do some improv training. We have a comedy group up called Second City. We love it. My niece and I went and did some improv training just to drop-in class, which was magnificent, frankly. One of the things they talked about in improv was this internal voice fighting all the time where you're trying to be perfect. As soon as you're in an improv, you're doing something. What you do is say something and your voice immediately defaults to, “That was the worst response anyone would have ever come up with.” In doing so, it shuts your brain down from coming up with the next one.
What they coach on is they started this mindset hack. People were good at improv. They train their minds where they are where they are. Whatever they've said is now the reality. To view it as an excellent contribution so that they can be prepared to build on the next one when they receive back from the partner. It's an interesting thing and the exercise proved it's so true. No matter what you say, you don't think it's very good.
You spoke a little bit in the book about that internal voice and how we help manage to that and how that confidence either comes across, or doesn't. Not to put you on the spot, but do you have any quick tips for some of the readers? It’s because this imposter syndrome is something that's pretty prevalent and B2B sales.
The issue is where that comes from is from an unconscious dialogue that started somewhere in your past. You can go to psychotherapy for years and find out where the original wound, the childhood trauma happened or you can deal with it as it is now and say, “This is not helping me.” I'm going to replace that unconscious thought pattern with a positive one. I recommend people giving themselves positive mantras.
I was an actor for years before I got real paid work. One of my great fears as an actor or many actors share, especially stage actors, is you're going to forget your lines. We call it going dry. Your great fear s you're going to go dry. If you replace that fear with a positive mantra that you chant over and over to yourself internally, then gradually what you do is you reach down into that unconscious mind. You heal whatever that trauma was or fear was and replace it with this positive thing.
It's good to keep them simple. My Mantra was, “I know my lines. I got this.” I would just say that over and over again to myself. Gradually over time, that replaced wherever that other fear came from. As I say, you have the choice. You can either do that positive work, or you can go to years of psychotherapy and hope that that untangles your psyche. I recommend both, but if you want to get there quickly, start using the mantras on yourself.
The other way you can do it is by doing something that actors called sense memory training, which is before you go into that meeting, the high stakes meeting, sit down for a couple of minutes and remember a time. It has to be a very powerful time, when you were happy, confident and things were going great. It was rocking for you. Get yourself into that state of mind through that memory as powerful as possible.
Think about what it looked like, sounded like, tasted like, smelled like and felt like or use all the five cents to put yourself in that state. While I was acting, I also did the offset. I had a tragic scene to play in one of my first professional stage plays. It was revival of something called the Heidi Chronicles. My character was about to die and I knew this. I was dying of AIDS, so I had to have this very sad scene. What I used was a memory of when a pet died.
I remembered that day very powerful. It was a very sad moment for me. I would put myself back into that moment, what it was like holding the dog in this case, in my arms, as he died and so on and so forth. I would walk out on stage full of all that sadness. You can do the same thing, only you want to create typically a positive, “I got this,” moment. That's one that's full of connection and positive feelings. That with practice, let me stress. The first time you try it, you won't feel a huge effect. It takes practice over time, but that's another way to access a positive unconscious attitude.
By the way, that theme of practice, no surgeon ever picked up a scalpel and then started operating on a patient. They picked up a scalpel in medical school. They operated on 5,000 grapes over five years and then did it. They keep training in getting better. No tool, no concept, and no idea knocks the ball out of the park the first time if there's value in it. You've got to work these things.
Episode Wrap-up And Closing Words
Nick, it's been a huge pleasure speaking with you. I was super excited about this. It was a red-letter day for us in the funnel because I'm such a fan of your work. We didn't even get to, Can You Hear Me?: How to Connect with People in a Virtual World, but that was the first book of yours that I read. It’s staggeringly good also. Nick, how else can people get in contact with you or learn more about how you can help them?
The simplest way is to go to our website PublicWords.com. That has, by the way, the treasure trove of articles, videos, and advice about how to do many of these things and a lot more besides omnivore when it comes to learning about communication. I track Neuroscience constantly, so I'm always putting updates in what we're learning about how the brain and the mind communications works. You can connect with us or use all the free resources there.
Thank you so much for joining, Nick.
It's a great pleasure, Mark. Thank you for having me on your show.
Team, thank you for joining the show. As everybody knows, we run this show to improve the performance in professionalism of B2B sales because we believe in doing so. We're improving the lives of anybody in professional sales. Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this episode, please like and subscribe to the show and tell your friends because that's how we get fantastic guests like Nick that matters to us. By the way, we're also growth oriented. If there's ways that we can make this show more valuable to you, please let us know.
You can reach me at MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com. That's my personal email. We love constructive criticism. In fact, the things we do today came from many of the people who listen who gave us some great ideas. I'll respond to every tip or advice that gets sent in. Thanks for sending them. Keep them coming. Until the next episode.
Important Links
About Dr. 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 TED talks. He has worked widely with political and educational leaders. And he has spoken, led conferences, and moderated panels at venues around the world. During the last election cycle, he provided expert commentary on the presidential debates for CNN. Most recently, he designed and hosted TEDxWaldenPond in November 2023.
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 book on authentic communications, Trust Me, was published by Jossey-Bass in January 2009. His book on communications and brain science, Power Cues: The Subtle Science of Leading Groups, Persuading Others, and Maximizing Your Personal Impact, was published by Harvard in May 2014. His latest book is Can You Hear Me?, on the perils of virtual communication, published by Harvard in 2018. His forthcoming book is The Embodied Voice, tentatively planned for 2025.