Scott Berkun

Why you need a public speaking book

While on tour in SF this week I ran into some folks who read my earlier books. They were surprised I’d write a book about a topic as boring as public speaking.  Why not another innovation book, or a book on creative thinking? they’d ask. You know, FUN books. What does public speaking have to do with me, they’d say. It’s a fair question to anyone who has been a fan of my work for awhile.

And I’d have to admit they had a point. Until I started working on this book, I’d never read a book on public speaking myself (although I’d read more than 50 by the time I was done).

And here’s why I told them that despite appearances, this book is for them too:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.

I think it’s a great book to give to friends or co-workers who you know need to get better at these sorts of skills, but need a fun kick in the pants to up their game. But then again I’m far from objective :)

Check out the free sample chapters here – you can see for yourself if the above is true.

If you do check it out, let me know what you think.

• Posted Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 at 10:22 am


• in books, public speaking | 4 Comments » |