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"Confessions of a Public Speaker" by Scott Berkun

Mar 20, 2011 ·  Excellent. A must-read if you want to improve your public speaking.

Scott Berkun is a former software engineer who changed his career to being an author and public speaker. This is an interesting career path, and in this book Berkun tells the story of how he got into public speaking and what he picked up on the long road of mastering this skill.

Confessions is a book on public speaking, but not in a reference or text book kind of way. In the author’s own words, it’s “highly personal and opinionated”.

Berkun mostly builds the chapters around personal stories, experiences---good and bad---he had when speaking, and the lessons learned from these experiences. While there are also plenty of literature references to back up some claims, the meat of the book is in this personal approach. And indeed, after reading this book one gets the impression that this approach is essential, because in the end successful public speaking is measured by the degree to which the speaker emotionally captures the audience. Beyond listing tricks and guidelines to slide design, although he touches on these subjects, Berkun focuses on capturing the audience.

Below you’ll find notes and brief summaries I made for most of the chapters. If you’re interested in the subject or if you simply need to present once in a while, I strongly recommend reading the book.

With I Can’t See You Naked, Berkun starts off with a chapter to put you at ease: no one cares as much as you do when things go wrong. People care and remember when it went right. It’s a long learning process to become good at presenting, and Berkun remarks “if you’d like to be good at something, the first thing to go out the window is the notion of perfection”. Perfection stops you from learning and taking chances. Be yourself and be useful, with the mistakes you make.

The Attack Of The Butterflies deals with being afraid of the stage. Being nervous when facing a crowd is built in to humans through evolution and there’s nothing you can do about that. But fear is also good because it focuses attention. All interesting things in life come with fears: asking the cute girl for a date, applying for a job, writing a novel.

So what to do to make that fear manageable and even useful? Practice a lot. By actually standing up and imagining a crowd and presenting. Apart from improving the presentation, it makes you comfortable and alerts to potential problems. Also, on the day of the talk, arrive early and get accustomed to the room and the tech.

The chapter $30,000 An Hour explains the lecture circuit and the economics of public speaking. Since it’s not a goal of mine to earn money by speaking, it wasn’t that relevant to me, but has some interesting information. There’s a list of exemplary fees for a one-hour lecture, topped by Bill Clinton at $150,000+.

How To Work A Tough Room is actually about the room! Berkun says its importance is vastly underestimated and calls for more real theaters. He presents his density theory: that not the absolute size of the crowd matters, but its density. Facing a mostly empty room, do what you can to make them come forward. Offer rewards!

Do Not Eat The Microphone is titled after the expression meaning the moment when the audience’s confidence in having its needs met is lost, and people stop listening. How to avoid that? Berkun says, besides following the more technical basics of good presentations, the key is in thinking your talk through thoroughly. “All good public speaking is based on good private thinking”. Berkun fights the myth of spontaneous inspiration--good public speeches are the product of lots of work and practice.

Of course you also need to get your deep thoughts across. Prepare doing four things: 1. take a strong position in the title, 2. think carefully about your audience, 3. make your points as concise as possible, and 4. know likely counterarguments.

The Science Of Not Boring People goes deeper into some techniques to ensure keeping the audience with you. This highly useful chapter covers pacing and rhythm, story telling, involving the audience, and other subjects. .

At some point you’ll have given a few presentations, and like in every other field, feedback is the key to improve. Berkun gives tips on what questions to ask your audience as well as on practicing by yourself at home.

The Clutch Is Your Friend gives extra advice for lectures where the goal is to actually teach the audience something, as opposed to, for instance, merely giving an overview of a topic or a motivational speech. The alternate title is “Why Teaching Is Almost Impossible”--in Berkun’s view, given the difficulties in teaching a large group of people effectively, you can only prepare and follow a few simple rules and hope for the best. The rules: small numbers win, make it active and interesting, and start with an insight that interests the students.

With Confessions, a great and funny chapter ends the book: Berkun confesses some tricks he uses and some thoughts going through his mind frequently when speaking. You learn that everything is allowed as long as you capture your audience, and after all, “the easiest way to be interesting is to be honest”. If you want to know if Berkun wears underwear when giving a talk, read this chapter.

The book has several useful appendices with concise extra information, such as How To Make A Point. Also, the references are great. To keep in mind: Donald A. Bligh, What’s the Use of Lectures, and Ken Bain, What the Best College Teachers Do.

As I said before, a great book, recommended without hesitation.