Chatter
The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It
Lavin Exclusive Speaker
If you want to achieve high performance and tap into powerful leadership, you have to start by leading yourself. Award-winning psychologist Ethan Kross can show you how to turn your inner voice into a powerful coach and teammate—plus boost motivation, overcome impostor syndrome, and hone your mental fitness. Ethan is a leading expert on the science behind your self-talk and the author of the international bestseller Chatter, called “the groundbreaking and transformative book the world needs now” (Susan Cain, bestselling author of Quiet). He draws on his research to give you a scientifically backed set of tools that can help anyone lead themselves and build resilience—from students to executives, and everyone in between. “Changing the conversations we have with ourselves has the power to change our lives,” Ethan says.
We have everything we need to stop overthinking, embrace introspection, and use our inner voice to motivate and propel us forward. Ethan Kross, award-winning psychology professor at the University of Michigan and director of the Emotion and Self Control Lab, says that we can change our lives by changing the conversations we have with ourselves. Drawing on his acclaimed book Chatter, he shows us how we can strengthen our emotional and mental fitness to find more meaning, satisfaction, and success in all areas of life. Ethan’s concrete strategies have proven to be an invaluable resource for everyone—from students to small business owners to CEOs—in any challenge or stressful situation. His science-based toolkit for avoiding overthinking help all kinds of leaders and employees to build wisdom and coach ourselves through every circumstance.
In his talks, Ethan provides us with simple, immediately actionable tools for distancing ourselves from negativity and harnessing our self-talk. He gives you tools that you can use on your own to lead yourself and overcome stress, like using your own name to give yourself a pep talk. He also provides tools that you can use with other people (such as your employees or team members) to help them work through their chatter and reach their full potential. Finally, he gives you tools that involve the environment, like increasing your exposure to green space, that will help you improve the overall mental fitness of your entire organization.
Brilliantly argued and deeply compelling, Chatter has received praise from many remarkable leaders in the field, including Angela Duckworth, the world’s preeminent expert on grit, and New York Times bestselling author Dan Pink, who declares, “Ethan Kross has written the definitive work on how to redirect our inner voices away from rumination and self-criticism and toward reflection and self-improvement.” It was one of Amazon’s best non-fiction books of 2021.
An award-winning professor at the University of Michigan and the Ross School of Business, Ethan is also the director of the Emotion & Self Control Laboratory, where he studies how people can control their emotions. Using an integrative approach to study these issues, Ethan draws on multiple disciplines within psychology, including social, personality, clinical, developmental, and neuroscience.
Ethan has participated in policy discussions at the White House and has been interviewed on CBS Evening News, Good Morning America, and NPR’s Morning Edition. His pioneering research has been featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The New England Journal of Medicine, and Science. He completed his BA at the University of Pennsylvania and his PhD at Columbia University.