Recently I was in an audience at a presentation. It was all I could do to stay awake! The speaker had great content but a terrible delivery. He seemed to talk into the podium and after concluding he said, “Uhhh… okay, that's what I have to say.” The applause was polite.
Not everyone was born to speak in public but if you want to share your passion for you business, you should be prepared for it and be ready to present. After hearing that presentation, I wanted to make sure that I was prepared to give a dynamic presentation when called upon so I picked up a book from Amazon to “brush up” on my public speaking skills.
10 Days to More Confident Public Speaking by Lenny Laskowski and The Princeton Language Institute is an excellent book that can help you succeed in public speaking.
What makes the book so good is that it is very practical and easy to read. Laskowski's approach is to divide the topic of public speaking into 10 sections and have the reader tackle one section per day. Each day, one short chapter covers topics such as “Relating to your Audience” or “Remembering what you have to say” or “Ending your speech with a bang.” He uses interesting real life examples and covers several types of presentations that most small business owners would typically have to give.
The book is deceptively robust! By that I mean, it's small — my paperback version is 203 pages but it is so easy to read that I usually read 2 or 3 chapters a day. When I first got the book I thought “How could the author cover such a huge topic in such a small book?” but by page 203 I knew that he had done so quite adequately.
