The Naked Presenter replete with experts

Garr Reynolds is author of THE NAKED PRESENTER and one of the little things he does as he brings public speaking challenges to life is include comments by many experts -- most of the comments from relatively recent publications or talks. I like Reynolds' work because it dovetails with a lot of my personal ideas on public speaking. In a very real sense my reading of Reynolds is an example of Selective Exposure and Selective Perception. By the way, those are interesting concepts that speakers should at least recognize even if you don't have a complete understanding. We talk about those concepts in several of the Coker College communication classes that I teach.

I am not yet through with the Reynolds book but I have been impressed with the experts and the sources he has been noting in his chapters. I thought it might be useful to discuss where some of this information is coming from.

First, I was surprised to be introduced to the name of Christopher Craft who has a business called PalmettoLearning LLC. Craft is a resource for effective teaching based in Columbia, SC. It is interesting to me that an author living in Japan provided my first exposure to Craft. in the Naked Presenter Craft is given the opportunity to share some information about avoiding cognitive overload. (p 37)

Another two-page feature presentation was staged by Les Posen, who was in the book to discuss dealing with the fear of public speaking from a neuroscience perspective.

This post would drag far too long if I put in all the sources mentioned by Reynolds but there are some additional books that are really gems. One is Brain Rules by Dr. John Medena - Pear Press 2009. Excellent on many levels.

A third book is not even out at Amazon though it is in the pre-order stages and this is Guy Kawasaki's newest book -- ENCHANTMENT - THE ART OF CHANGING HEARTS, MINDS AND ACTIONS.

David Rock, a psychologist, is a master thinker in the field of human performance and his book THE BRAIN AT WORK gets some regular notice in THE NAKED PRESENTER.

Author proposed a PUNCH to open speech

In another post I mentioned being able to talk to a couple of classes of seventh graders at Tanglewood Middle School in Greenville, SC about how to produce a dynamic speech introduction. I think they might have liked the advice that a well known presentation guru gives in his newest book, THE NAKED PRESENTER. Garr Reynolds suggests the PUNCH idea for an attention-grabbing speech introduction.

Books and blogs are one way of trying to stay abreast of new information and Reynolds, in addition to this book, maintains a blog called Presentation Zen. If you look at much about presentations in today's search engines, you are bound to find a lot of references to the Reynolds ideas.

What does the acronym P U N C H stand for? Reynolds says you can punch up your introduction if you find a relevant PERSONAL STORY that will get immediate reaction from your audience. He notes that the UNEXPECTED is another great way and his ideas about engaging the audience through challenging their preconceptions is interesting. NOVELTY is also something that can command that attention. Most of us will give a second thought to something we may not have heard previously. If you CHALLENGE an audience in an attempt to move them from their comfort zone it is very likely you will be crafting an attention getting opening. Finally, the H is for HUMOR. Reynolds is quick to caution the potential speaker (presenter) that you are not telling jokes, you are finding humor in situations that related directly and specifically to what you are discussing.

Start your next presentation with a PUNCH and see if you don't get some warmer applause. I am looking forward to fitting in some of Reynolds' ideas into my Coker College speech classes following this semester sabbatical.

Professional Speakers have their own networks

Steve Siebold is a speaker, a marketer and a blogger. He blogs about ways of breaking into the professional public speaking business and while I have not been able to take advantage of his seminars, I think he may be a strong resource for those wanting to become highly paid speakers. The blog he distributed most recently has several short videos that give potential professionals or professionals some idea of the resources that he is making available. For those who are not aspiring to the professional level, these blog posts can be a source of inspiration for your own speaking ventures at whatever level you are speaking from the classroom to the meeting room.

From the perspective of a my role as a college professor of public speaking, I find Siebold's approaches interesting and I do share when I get the opportunity for teaching an advanced public speaking class at Coker College.

Presentation God is interesting read

Scott Schwertly is an expert in presentations and you get more than an inkling of how much he knows as you go through his newest book, HOW TO BE A PRESENTATION GOD by Wiley and Sons with a copyright of 2011. He crams a lot of information into the book but I found the underlying philosophy of presenting to be the most valuable content. There are several sentences that might summarize his philosophy but I am going to chooose this one: "Our worst enemy is our own low expectations. What if the opportunity at hand is far, far bigger than anything you could have imagined? What would you do? Don't just make a living, Change the world."

He points out in this book that on a daily basis more than 30 million face to face presentations are made. He calls this about the oldest form of mass communication and he seems to have a point. After all, we are still using the principles espoused by Aristotle ON RHETORIC as the foundation for our rhetorical skills training today.

Schwertly brings the reader up to date with presentation software ideas and with a detailed description of several key audiences, which in themselves make the book worth its price.

Students who have had me for public speaking at Coker College know my three major rules of being successful on the platform: Know your audience; Know you are prepared; Know your subject. Schwertly does a good job of explaining the whys and hows of these three principles, which may be why I enjoyed the book so much.

Grading Obama: The President Earns a B+ for His State of the Union Presentation—Here’s What He Did Right, Wrong and What It All Means to Communicators

The State of the Union is an important speech for the nation. The lead up to this year's State of the Union put a great deal of pressure on the tone and I think the President came off with the tone of continuing hope and optimism. Now, I am a person who believes that there is a significant role for government and the President did defend the role of government. At the same time he also provided some interesting thinking about careful spending. One media trainer had an early blog grading the President's speech and I have included that in this write up.



Grading Obama: The President Earns a B+ for His State of the Union Presentation—Here’s What He Did Right, Wrong and What It All Means to Communicators

Interesting article from Marketing Profs

There is an interesting article on the MARKETING PROFS web site that discusses public speaking and presentations. He has eight or nine tips. One of his tips is to minimize technology and the other tips generally talk about what you do with the technology you decide to use in the presentation. I really think he could have reemphasized the idea of leave the technology at home because people are wanting to hear your ideas and generally the technology is going to get in the way.

The best tip he has in the article is No Notes. "It is a little unauthentic...", he says. Really, you should know your content and be organized in MAIN POINT structure and be able to adapt your talk to the audience, the time available and the goal you have for making the presentation. That is all easy to write but not always as easy to implement.

So, I will end with one of my continuing public speaking tips. If it has been awhile since you have been in front of audiences, become a Toastmaster. That group makes a rapid difference in a motivated person's ability to become an effective public speaker. Or, if you are a student at a place like Coker College, make sure you get to the speaking classes and then take every opportunity offered to get in front of audiences.

Books are a great place for "Material"

One of the major challenges for many beginning speakers is figuring out what to talk about. Most of these beginning speakers have a great many things they are doing and hope to do but often do not think about those things as speech material. We do a lot of brainstorming in my Coker College classes to come up with speech ideas. While I hear from many of these student that they don't read I continue to encourage them to look to books for both subjects and for speech-content material.

We are in a season when lots of people are summarizing their reading of the past year and I think some of these lists could be useful for speakers looking for ideas. Tim Elmore, who is a leadership trainer and also a frequent speaker, just posted his 12 top books from 2010. This is a good example of a list that could help others begin to find "material" for their talks -- both in class and in their real lives. This idea is not only good for students but can also work for people who are members of Toastmasters and other speaking groups.

I just finished a book by Steven Johnson about where ideas come from and this book could be good for a year's worth of speech material. In addition, he has a major bibliography in his notes section that is excellent for people who might be thinking, writing and talking on such subjects as innovation and creativity, learning, leadership, etc.