The Quick and Easy Way To Effective Speaking is a summary of Dale Carnegie’s timeless advice on how to give the perfect presentation. Easy to understand, erudite and a classic in the genre, it’s a formulaic approach to creating a naturally effective speech.
The Quick and Easy Way To Effective Speaking Summary
Dale Carnegie is a giant of the self-help world. Famous for How To Win Friends and Influence People this guide is no less powerful and is focussed on an equally pressing concern – how to give a natural and effective presentation in public.
From fundamentals to form and preparation, this book covers a great deal of ground and provides a number of instantly applicable approaches to help you craft and deliver a powerful public presentation on any subject.
Below are some of the key insights from the book.
Key Insights
- Most people, even the world’s best orators, are anxious about speaking in people.
- The perfect presentation is an interplay between content, speaker and audience.
- To Earn the right to speak on a subject, it’s important to limit and define your subject, humanise and personalise the content matter and use specific, concrete language to ensure your point gets across.
- To vitalise your subject matter, choose topics that energise you with which you have personal experience. This way you can offer a human interest angle.
- Reach out to the audience by being humble and inviting them to be a partner in your speech and its delivery.
- Presentations should always be short, action orientated and beneficial.
- The Magic Formula is: One example, One point, One action.
- At all times use visual language, simple expressions and concise action-specific delivery to ensure your point gets across clearly.
- For impromptu speeches, have an example to hand and speak with passion in a concise and self-explanatory manner.
- Always prepare what you are going to say but allow practice and the audience to guide how you choose to say it.
- For longer talks, get attention immediately, add suspense and make use of audience participation and narratives to maintain interest.
- Be prepared to support your main ideas but only reveal the most important information and expand if asked about it.
- Seek out opportunities to speak in public to hone your abilities.