Four books to transform you from a good to great public speaker

The ideas that have helped me the most

You are a decent presenter who knows the basics.

But now you want to up your game and move from someone who just keeps people’s interest to making a huge impact who those who listen to you.

How do you do that?

How do you get the edge in communicating that does more than keep people merely interested?

How do you become someone who makes a HUGE impact through your words?

Here’s the four books I’ve used to dramatically improve the power of my presentations.

Learn how to tell a good story (Storyworthy by Matthew Dicks)

I thought I knew how to tell a good story then I read Storyworthy and was blown away by it. Dicks, who is an award winning storyteller, has some brilliant insights that I had never heard from anyone else.

There are a lot of specific techniques that would be overwhelming to a someone new to public speaking. But if you are used to telling stories then this book is a goldmine of ideas. Dicks uses his own stories to demonstrate how the various techniques work which makes the book brilliantly practical.

I have definitely sensed my own communication becoming more engaging since using these ideas.

Dicks also give some techniques you can use to discover your own personal stories, which is a great bonus.

Craft a message that captivates (Made to Stick by Dan & Chip Heath)

This is an astonishingly insightful guide to making your ideas stick in the mind (and hearts) of your hearers.

Dan & Chip Heath have meticiously researched what makes certain ideas stick whilst others are easily forgotten. Their six principles can easily be used to make your presentations really powerful and impactful. There’s a lot here though, so take your time working through each principle and trying it out.

The ‘Unexpected’ principle is probably my favourite. You need to create a curiousity gap in the mind of your listeners so they feel a need to hear what you have to say. Too often presenters give information without creating any desire in their audience for their content first. Adopting this principle alone will utterly transform your presentations.

I have used this book loads and always recommend it to people who want to improve their skills. There are plenty of good summaries of this book around on the internet but it is well worth taking to the time to read and digest the book itself.

Making great visuals (Slide:ology by Nancy Duarte)

It is astonishing how many uses of powerpoint & similar software actually makes a presentation worse and send people into sleep mode by giving them lots of text to read.

This book will stop you making that mistake. Duarte’s influence on how to use powerpoint effectively has been massive over the last decade. Although it hasn’t infiltrated everywhere there are less bullet point presentations than there used to be!

This is a beautiful book (hence the price) and you’ll need the printed version (don’t buy it on kindle) to get the full visual effect of the book.

It will inspire you to think differently about your slides and how to craft ones that actually help you communicate your message. And even if you don’t have access to great graphic designers there are a ton of ideas here that anyone can use.

(Resonate by the same author is also worth a read)

How to influence your audience to change (Switch by Dan & Chip Heath)

This is a brilliant manual on how to inspire people to change what they think and what they do.

If your main strategy in persuading people of your idea is to give reasons for it then you need to read this book and adopt the tactics the Heath brothers offer you. This is a well researched book that is clearly communicated through the stories told and the three part change model they offer.

Perhaps the biggest takeaway is that to influence people to change, you need to appeal to the emotions to motivate people (rather than just appealing to the mind by giving reasons). Switch give numerous ideas and examples of how to do this, such as appealing to people’s sense of identity or shrinking the change to make it feel easy.

This book will challenge you to amend the content of your presentation and think carefully about how to motivate and affect change in those who listen to you. This is definitely more difficult that just giving a good presentation. But is there anything more inspiring that actually bringing some change through what we say?

I’ve loved reading these four books and am so grateful for their insights and how they’ve massively transformed my presentations.

And if you want to be a great speaker then…

Read them, write down their key ideas and then try them out. Your presentations will never be the same again!

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