I don’t read business books. In fact, for fear of sounding like the infamous character from a Nancy Mitford novel (“My dear Lady Kroesig, I have only ever read one book in my life, and that is White Fang by Jack London. It’s so frightfully good I’ve never bothered to read another”), I have only ever read one business book. It was called Tales from Wall Street and it was Warren Buffet’s favourite book, so I thought it was probably worth a look if only to pick up some betting tips. It is a series of explosive corporate disaster stories and needless to say it didn’t disappoint.
So, I approached my brief to review “Now you’re talking” by Lyn Roseaman with some trepidation. “Now you’re talking” is a guide to public speaking, designed to help you “take your speeches, talks and presentations to a wider audience and a bigger stage”. So, it’s a book for people who already have some ability and experience in speaking but who want to build their confidence and become more impressive and engaging speakers.
The who and the what
It’s good to define the audience for a book, in particular one in a crowded market. A quick glance at Amazon tells me there are 75 pages of books about getting your voice heard, presenting and public speaking. So, this is a very, very busy area. However, when I opened this little tome, I was pleasantly surprised to see a long collections of review quotes from several pals, including old colleagues like Danny Wain and new ones like Danielle Todd, plus a very motivating foreword from Ben Page no less! So, the insights profession has its very own public speaking specialist I realised, and as it is much needed expertise in insights, I was interested to find out more.
The book is based on Lyn’s extensive experience as a speaking coach, her deep knowledge of the topic (I was pleased to find this means I don’t have to read ‘Answer this 1 question and your audience will love you’, ‘The 11 Best Presentation Hacks you will ever need’ or ‘100 top speaking tips’), and her own research study into the concerns, competencies and aspirations of her own clients. The result is a very practical and deceptively simple guide.
Lyn includes great advice on how to build confidence, how to develop authenticity, how to make a connection with your audience including the all-important topic of storytelling, and how to change the hearts and minds of your audience. It is clearly structured in three sections (confidence, connection and change) and has plenty of practical acronyms (such as the PRO Approach), and key questions, to help the reader manage their nerves, identify a core message or use visual aids. It all makes very good practical sense.
The stories
I am a great fan of stories. I like a plot. Perhaps this is why I work in insights and why I particularly like the ‘case studies’ (stories, there I go again) used to illustrate the points. Indeed these for me are the most memorable parts of the book. Like the honest examples from Lyn’s own life, or the person giving a disastrous talk on public speaking at a school (yes, argh, know your audience) or the guy who tried to present someone else’s slides at a conference (triple argh!). Even the positive examples work well, and it got me to thinking that perhaps the reason I don’t read business books or self-help books is that I really don’t learn well from reading about how to do something. I learn best by example – and by failure. I have had too many of my own excruciating experiences of misjudging an audience, of not engaging, making assumptions, not rehearsing…the list goes on. So now I watch a lot of TED talks, I go to a lot of presentations, I rehearse with others, prepare, prepare, prepare some more.
The most important point for me is that ‘giving speeches talks and presentations is a learnable skill’ – as we have witnessed from the great work that Annie Pettit has done with the New Speakers Track at IIeX events – and if you do well learning from reading, this book will help you learn those skills. However, if like me you like to consume your learning by doing, you will simply have to go through those toe curling examples of getting it wrong before you get it right.
Lyn Roseaman is an author, speaker and coach helping people deliver cut-through speeches and presentations.
