Samuel Seibert

 Book Recommendation: “Confessions of a Public Speaker“

By Scott Berkun

 

Meta

 

• Who would benefit from reading this book?

   If you want to move from the hobby realm of public speaking to the professional.

 

• What could you get out of this book?

   Berkun opens up the behinds the scenes on the public speaking stage. You get to see what he makes on the typical engagement, how much travel is required, and the prep. investment for those speeches. You get a mix of public speaking tips / public speaking as a job. 

 

• How long to read?

  Three Evenings

 

• Pages & Highlights:

  240 Pages , 81 Sections Highlighted

 

• Thesis: 

 Come look at the good and grueling sides of public speaking and let me help you be a better speaker.

 

 

How I’ll Change my Speaking

(Calling out helpful quotes from the book)

 

A Perspective on Practice

“Now, while everyone is free to practice — it requires no special intelligence or magic powers — most people don’t because: It’s not fun It takes time They feel silly doing it They assume no one else does Their fear of speaking leads to procrastination, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of misery…” loc. 288

PLUS

“Put another way, when 100 people are listening to you for an hour, that’s 100 hours of people’s time devoted to what you have to say. If you can’t spend 5 or 10 hours preparing for them, thinking about them, and refining your points to best suit their needs, what does that say about your respect for your audience’s time? It says that your 5 hours are more important than 100 of theirs, which requires an ego larger than the entire solar system. And there is no doubt this disrespect will be obvious once you are on the stage.” loc. 895

 

Once I  meticulously recorded myself speaking – watching it, speaking-recording- watched it ; tweaking, polishing, and buffing my delivery dozens of times. Once I was done, since I had my material tight, I was able to pay more attention to the audience. Applying practice to free up my focus to be on the audience helps bring my speaking motivation back to love for the people I’m talking to, how the story can benefit them, and not my enamoration with the topic.

 

 

Being Natural vs. Being Effective

“Most speakers are so afraid to do anything out of the ordinary that they squander the very power the audience hopes they will use.” loc. 1210

 

The push/pull back-n-forth of wanting to have the presentation be natural versus wanting to be effective. There are odd things presenters will do when delivering a talk which are strange but do increase the stickiness of the presentation. Starting out as a speaker I want to feel natural, but giving a speech is not the same as having a conversation. This statement helped me thing from the audience side of the room. I should be more free to try something quirky from time-to-time that will help my audience remember the message.

The last speech I delivered was about balance and used the illustration of striking the tree pose in yoga. I did the yoga pose during the speech and it was a big hit. It made me think about how doing a yoga pose would not work in text, or an audio track, and should focus more of my speeches on content leveraging illustrates that benefit the most from being live and in-person.

 

 

Strengthening Supporting Muscles

“I can’t recommend taking an improv theater class strongly enough.” loc. 2111

 

I’ve been told in speech feedback that I move on the stage in confidence and my gestures help abstract ideas form a picture in the listeners mind.  I think the movement is coming from taking dance and tumbling class. I’m not great dancer, but the classes did help me feel confident in moving across a stage, (even when the confidence isn’t warranted).

• Dance will help you with body language and movement.

• Singing techniques will help with your voice.

• An auctioneer class will teach you how to speak faster.

Practicing a related disciplines can strengthen the muscles around our public speaking joints.

 

 

Follow-Up Books

When reading I’ll make a highlight when the author references a research source, or recommends a book.

I’ve found some of the best off the beaten-best-seller-path books this way.

Below are the books that caught me eye from this book, and the context the author mentioned them in:

 

 

• “The Book of Lists by David Wallechinksy et al. (William Morrow), a trivia book first published in 1977″

• “In his excellent book Brain Rules (Pear Press), Dr. John Medina points out that it is very difficult for the body to distinguish between states of arousal and states of anxiety”

• “Professor Donald A. Bligh, while doing research for his book What’s the Use of Lectures?“

• “The study of acting is not the practice of being fake. It’s learning how to become more expressive as yourself and applying that to life on stage and off. All communicators benefit from learning about theater. See An Actor Prepares, Constantin Stanislavski (Theatre Arts Book).”

• “In Ken Bain’s excellent book, What the Best College Teachers Do (Harvard University Press)”

• “The most useful inventory of rhetorical tactics I’ve seen is Thank You for Arguing, by Jay Heinrichs (Three Rivers Press).”

• “Karen Kangas Dwyer’s book Conquer Your Speech Anxiety“

• “The Francis Effect, by M. F. Fensholt (Oakmont Press), this is a workbook. Along with each chapter are exercises designed to help you understand your unique set of fears, and to accept and work through them. It comes with a CD that helps with the exercises.”

• “Alan Weiss’s Money Talks: How to Make a Million As a Speaker (McGraw-Hill) was the best professional reference I found for how to make a living as a public speaker. It’s the book with the least fluff, and it has the most honest — often brutally so — breakdown on how to find people who will hire you, the value proposition from their point of view, and how to use all this to your advantage.”

 

Challenge

 

Sign up for a performance class, (such as a dance class or an impromptu theater class) to help expand your public speak skills. I’ll be taking an impromptu theater class.

In the comments, have you taken performance classes before? If you did what was the impact to how you presented?

 

 

-SRS
 

 

Disclaimer:
The Amazon links used in this post are affiliate links.

If you click through the Amazon links and buy the book,

it does NOT cost you anything extra but Amazon does send me a tiny % as a thank you.

If you found this helpful, and do decide to get the book,

please purchase it through one of the links here.

Thanks ^_^