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Rock Your Presentation: A New Guide to Speaking with Passion
Nearly all of us have to pitch or present our ideas, whether in a formal setting after lunch to a hundred jaded salespeople, in a lecture theatre or classroom, putting over our thoughts to a team of colleagues, or even selling a concept one-on-one to your boss.
In all these situations we can choose between delivering a message that sounds like muzak, or one that wakes the listener up. Most presentations and pitches could benefit from being 'rocked up' - becoming more dynamic and memorable, in ways that arouse the passion of the audience. By applying the ideas in ROCK YOUR PRESENTATION you can deliver better, livelier and more emotionally engaging talks which leave audiences with the kind of high you get from being in a crowd at a great concert.
Barlow applies the rock'n'roll metaphor throughout the book, turning what, to many, is a stressful subject into an exciting and fun exercise you can't wait to try out. So take the Van Halen approach to planning your presentation, deliver it like a hit song with a chorus and a bridge, play a few well-rehearsed power chords and set your audience ablaze.
In all these situations we can choose between delivering a message that sounds like muzak, or one that wakes the listener up. Most presentations and pitches could benefit from being 'rocked up' - becoming more dynamic and memorable, in ways that arouse the passion of the audience. By applying the ideas in ROCK YOUR PRESENTATION you can deliver better, livelier and more emotionally engaging talks which leave audiences with the kind of high you get from being in a crowd at a great concert.
Barlow applies the rock'n'roll metaphor throughout the book, turning what, to many, is a stressful subject into an exciting and fun exercise you can't wait to try out. So take the Van Halen approach to planning your presentation, deliver it like a hit song with a chorus and a bridge, play a few well-rehearsed power chords and set your audience ablaze.
256 pages, Paperback
Published November 21, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
February 10, 2019
I enjoyed dipping in and out of this guide to speaking with passion and pitching with passion. I was a little nervous of reading it, perhaps scared of being hectored at, but that isn't the tone at all. It's very much aimed at people selling stuff, or pitching for coroporate clients, but it could just as well be aimed at teachers as well, after all teachers often have the hard job of 'selling' learning to their students. There were a few key take-out messages from this book for me. First, it's good on PowerPoint, recommends:
Getting down your slides by half after you've finished a 'draft' PP
Using visuals above bullet points, illustrating how a good picture can act as a thousand words
Sticking to one or two main points, rather than overloading with points
Storytelling by giving human examples of your concepts in action.
I really liked the way he recommended using props during speeches, talking about how even something as simple as a coat hangar can be used to give a sense of physicality, of realness to a talk. This made me think that a few well chosen objects can assist telling a story that illustrates your key points, and can bring humour and warmth to a talk. So using things like your old teddy bear, your child's first shoes, and a lucky charm could be used to talk about a topic like innocence in childhood or whatever fits with the objects. Objects can used again and again in different ways for different topics.
He also encourages you to provide stories that are meaningful to you.
I liked the way he encourages you to think of presentations as a form of music or acting. This analogy works well if a little cheesily throughout the book, e.g. 'The Power Chords of speaking' etc.
One of the puzzles of the book is that it's not that well presented itself, looking a bit bland on the page, and is repetitive in a way. It could benefitted from taking its own advice.
Getting down your slides by half after you've finished a 'draft' PP
Using visuals above bullet points, illustrating how a good picture can act as a thousand words
Sticking to one or two main points, rather than overloading with points
Storytelling by giving human examples of your concepts in action.
I really liked the way he recommended using props during speeches, talking about how even something as simple as a coat hangar can be used to give a sense of physicality, of realness to a talk. This made me think that a few well chosen objects can assist telling a story that illustrates your key points, and can bring humour and warmth to a talk. So using things like your old teddy bear, your child's first shoes, and a lucky charm could be used to talk about a topic like innocence in childhood or whatever fits with the objects. Objects can used again and again in different ways for different topics.
He also encourages you to provide stories that are meaningful to you.
I liked the way he encourages you to think of presentations as a form of music or acting. This analogy works well if a little cheesily throughout the book, e.g. 'The Power Chords of speaking' etc.
One of the puzzles of the book is that it's not that well presented itself, looking a bit bland on the page, and is repetitive in a way. It could benefitted from taking its own advice.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review