- We say about 12,000 words a day. Unless you are in solitary confinement, or in a psycho ward, you say most of those words to other people, And you do it mostly at work, often trying to convince other people to do things you feel are important. Most of the time you open your mouth you are a kind of public speaker. Yet most of us are ignorant of how our brains process speech, what separates a convincing person from a boring one, and what brain science has to say about listening and learning. We’re all speakers and we all benefit if we improve.
- Good public speaking drives better thinking. Speaking, and writing, is a forcing function for your thoughts. An opinion only in your mind seems perfect, but only when you write it or explain the argument to someone else that the details and nuances you overlooked become real. To speak about something forces you to think about it more clearly, which is good for you.
- I’ve learned more from public speaking than almost anything else I’ve done. By traveling around the world to lecture, I’ve met more interesting people, heard more interesting opinions, and been forced to rethink more thoughts than nearly any other activity. Speaking is a forcing function for many of the good things people say they want from life: dealing with fear, understanding themselves, making connections and learning new things.
- Ideas do not sell themselves. From Edison, to Einstein, to Steve Jobs, if you have ideas, you will be speaking about them to others to convince them of their value. It’s an unavoidable and essential part of the job of getting your ideas to the world. If you haven’t studied presenting, you are betraying your ideas as pitching and presentations are the lens through which your ideas will be judged. The best skill creatives, entrepreneurs and inventors need to learn is how to talk about their work to people who know nothing about their work.
- We are teaching and learning all the time. Speaking is often the means for sharing what we know with friends, children, students or even co-workers. By getting better at speaking we amplify not only our ability to share what we know, but our capacity to help people teaching us do it effectively.
- We learn best by making mistakes, and in the book I make many of them for you. I found most books on public speaking really boring, since they leave all the good stuff out. Namely what goes wrong, what happens back stage or between gigs, and that’s the focus of my book. It’s a narrative driven book, largely telling the stories of things going wrong, what I learned and how I got improved. You get the benefit of all my embarrassments.
- Funny, inspiring, business books are rare. I fought hard to get the word Confessions in the title, since that gave me license as a writer to be completely honest, and share the same kind of perspective I’d share if I were out to a few beers with some friends who wanted to know all the big secrets. I worked very hard to make it a fun, fast paced, provocative read – unlike many books, this is one you’re likely to finish and enjoy it all the way through. The Wall Street Journal and Slashdot among other reviews, agree with the big upsides of the choice I made.
via scottberkun.com
Scott Berkun titles this blog post "Why You Need A Publlc Speaking Book." I've seen a lot of traffic on the net about his new book, Confessions of a Public Speaker and think I need to pick up a copy. I really like his emphasis on Point 2, good speaking drives better thinking, and Point 4, you speak to convince others of the value of your ideas." In Toastmasters, I think we tend to overemphasize the technical and showy aspects of speechmaking and underemphasize our argument and content.
