A friend of mine asked if I could recommend any books that talk about public speaking is an important skill for business success. Is this something that hiring managers look for?
I absolutely believe that good public speaking skills are incredibly helpful to your career. How many meetings have you sat in, presented at, and commented on? Someone who can clearly and concisely express ideas in an interesting manner will be far ahead of the game.
I don’t have any books to recommend on the topic though, so I’m turning you you. Any book suggestions? They don’t have to focus exclusively on this issue.
Find and attend a local Toastmasters Club: http://reports.toastmasters.org/findaclub/
Try “What to Say After you Say Hello”. I found it very helpful developing my own public speaking skills. It also helps you with just general business communication. I would recommend going to a library, Half-Price Bookstore or any store where they sell business/leadership books. In the management/business section, there is ALWAYS a lot of books on public speaking and business communication, so if that first one doesn’t work for you, that one will. You might also consider taking an acting class. I know that sounds strange, but 80% of public speaking is getting over your fear of having people’s eyes on you, so acting classes really help with that, and they teach you a lot of techniques on how to speak in front of people and get over your jitters.
They are critical…they are a difference maker. Social Media, texting, Facebook and similar have crushed proper grammar and even minimal social skills. People no longer speaker in complete sentences thus making full and clear communication impossible instead leaving interpretation and guessing as the key ingredient.
If you can speak with energy and excitement and clarity and use words like paradigm properly, you will stand out.
If you are looking for a great teacher of such skills there are many but I highly recommend John Vautier at Vautier Communications or Kevin Daley the grand old man of communication skills or Jeannie Bress over at Communispond….all are great starts.
I speak on this topic a fair amount, and would even expand the scope to presentation design given how unavoidable Powerpoint is in knowledge work. My favorite book on the topic is an oldie but goodie: The Lost Art of the Great Speech by Richard Dowis. http://www.amazon.com/Lost-Art-Great-Speech-One-How/dp/0814470548
Joining a local Toastermasters group may be helpful in this area.
My favorite book about how to talk is Gretchen Hirsch’s “Talking Your Way to The Top.” It should be required reading in any business program, and on everyone’s bookshelf. Then there’s the serious manual about words: Bryan Garner’s Modern American Usage — but that’s for people who love language for its own sake and for writers who get paid to use words correctly. If you’re really interested in words and curious about where expressions and references come from, there the Oxford Dictionary of American Proverbs, and Oxford’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. Both will enrich your understanding and use of English — and make you a more potent speaker and writer.
As the person who asked the question (thank you!), I wasn’t looking for suggestions on how to become a good public speaker. Instead, I was hoping for something (an article, perhaps) from the human resources perspective that articulated why public speaking is a necessary and/or useful component to business success. I am grateful for any ideas!
How To Win Friends And Influence People, and The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking by Dale Carnegie. The second one (obviously) focuses more on the public speaking side of things, though How to Win Friends has a lot of applicable info on persuasive talk.
I suspect most of the titles mentioned, especially the recent ones, will do just that in the introduction or first chapter. They might not be from the HR standpoint (though they might, too), but I would imagine that some compelling research about the value of such a skill in corporate success–which I bet is in these titles somewhere–is relevant to the HR case regardless of who’s citing it.
Jen–Great question. I think we all assume the value and relevance of public speaking skills, but a quick Google search didn’t lead to much in the area of why and to what extent.
I’m sure it depends on the type of job, but I would think that the ability to give engaging presentations could be a point of differentiation versus other people (at least it was for me in the IT field).
As an engineer and marketer, public speaking is absolutely essential in business success. Every idea you have or opinion you hold, must be “sold” to a wider audience if you ever want to see your dreams implemented. Effective public speaking can also inspire (which is why volunteer opportunities are so frequently stressed.) Volunteering allows you to practice in an often lowered stress situation.
While Toastmasters is great for the mechanics of speaking practice, you may need more coaching and training to be truly effective by learning how to better deliver content. I cannot stress enough that while you need good mechanics, you also need good content. Ideally you want the audience to focus on the message, which is nowhere near as simple as it sounds.
My advice is to avoid hipocrisy as plague. Some books above suggest techniques how to speak and present convincingly, but these advices can lead you to create a false image of yourself. But nothing is more convincing than frankness. What is not equal to cruelty, keep in mind.
And, real communication is always a dialogue, even if you give a 90 minutes lecture. At least you feel your audience, her resonance. So listening is a prerequisite of speaking.
Completely and utterly. No question. If you can’t speak authentically, compellingly and convincingly in public, you can never lead or inspire. End of …
I don’t have a specific book in mind, but I recommend taking basic rhetoric courses if they’re available to you. And I’ll follow this thought up with the key concepts I came away with when I took some rhetoric courses:
Every aspect of what you do communicates something. Your word choice, your tone of voice, your stance, your clothing, your font (if it’s written), et cetera — it all communicates *something*, intentionally or unintentionally.
You can either understand this, and have some deliberate control over what you “say”, or you can fail to understand it, in which case a part of what you’re communicating is not going to be under your control, and may be random or worse.
Further: whenever you’re communicating, you’re doing so for a reason. It is always worth keeping that reason in mind as you decide what to communicate, and how.
I second (or third) Toastmasters as a method of improving your management skills
However, the real benefit from Toastmasters lies not in the improvement to speaking skills, it’s in the ability to give and receive constructive feedback.
One hallmark of an inept manager is the inability to give timely feedback in an appropriate manner. Some hold back for fear of hurting feelings, or wait until they are so angry/frustrated that they lash out. Others are inappropriately harsh. And then there are plenty of employees whose development is limited because they find it hard to hear feedback and take it personally.
At every Toastmasters session, every club member performs some service and is evaluated, and most weeks they will also provide evaluation to others.
This makes people more comfortable at offering and receiving criticism – and I think that’s the hidden secret which makes Toastmasters membership so effective.
Ditto the Toastmasters comment. You won’t get what you need from a book, but you will from Toastmasters. It’s a wonderful learning environment.
Not directly on topic, but related – regardless of gender of person with the original question, & other readers/commenters – I’ve found “The Eloquent Woman” (at http://eloquentwoman.blogspot.com) really interesting & useful: again, addresses some of the “why” as well as the “how”. Cheers.
@JenP now I’m desperate to know the story behind the question, but I’m nosy like that. It’s really interesting, we all know that public speaking is a valuable skill, most of us have been asked (sometimes forced) to do it but there’s little advice on why it’s necessary compared to other methods of connection…
Charlene, no deep story, actually. I’m a college professor (history) with a friend who is a professor who teaches public speaking. We were talking about the difficulty of getting “buy-in” from our business students in required (public speaking/world civ). (I use a teaching format that is heavily public speaking oriented, fwiw.) I thought that it might be useful for the students if I could offer them a bit of reading from an “expert” that argues that what they’re doing is also necessary/foundational for their careers, despite the fact that it’s a required course outside of Business.
Jen P,
How about this example. You have heard from a number of managers and subordinates that they hate the current corporate mandated review process. As the HR representative, you have 5 minutes to present your response to corporate management on how to either do away with or completely update this process. It goes without saying that your career at this company depends on how you handle this one assignment. Keep in mind that no one will ever read your report.
You do not need a book when a simple example can serve just as well.
I rented a book from the library written by Larry King several years ago. It was very easy to read and I really liked what his advice. One of the things that helped me the most was his approach to being honest up front about your insecurities. It seems that after we announce it, we aren’t hindered by it. I was in a sales job at the time and that approach really helped me get through some sales pitches.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Talk-Anyone-Anytime-Anywhere/dp/0517884534/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1357842190&sr=1-1
Confessions of a Public Speaker (Scott Berkun) is the one book that helped me with my speaking.
http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Public-Speaker-English/dp/1449301959