HBR's 10 Must Reads on Public Speaking and Presenting

by Harvard Business Review

Command the room—whether you're speaking to an audience of one or to hundreds.

We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the ten most important ones to help you speak confidently in front of a group and connect with audiences of any size.

This book will inspire you feel more confident when it's your turn to present; understand how to persuade, motivate, and change minds; frame your message so people really listen; gain your audience's trust by being more authentic; use visuals and data more effectively; learn to be more charismatic; and infuse your day-to-day communication with storytelling.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, Leadership, Communication, Audiobook, Self Help

1 pages, Audio CD

Published March 1, 2021

Reviews

[Mike Azzalina · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.25 - Wasn’t at all what I thought it was going to be. Articles that weren’t necessarily in line with the real topic and some repetitive stuff within the text.

[JournalsTLY]

Very good and logical insights - and thus describe the very mistakes that I have made - on how to tell a story ; and why the story is so important when giving a speech.

Make time for the essay -"The Organisational Apology" - why it is so difficult to make one and often so badly done when organisations do apologise . The essay highlights the assumptions that hinder decision making when making apologies. Gives good guidelines but still leaves much room to cover if and when caught a thorny situation when an apology is needed. But when done sincerely and well, the apology may help build trust.

[Arun Narayanaswamy · Rating 3 out of 5]

HBR books somehow don’t really elicit the wow feeling of reading a book. It’s a summation of similar yet disjoint articles forced into one theme and bound together. Each article takes a diff perspective and sort of never works together.
Though this book gives good insights on diff topics like story telling, emotions, being skilful etc, it doesn’t give you a feeling of reading a good plot and being able to recollect those experiences when you actually need.
Ok, but there are way better ones on this topic.

[Girish Kamath · Rating 3 out of 5]

HBR Presentations that Persuade and Motivate (RDM series). This book is a collection of articles containing few good ideas on how to catch audience attention in the beginning, how to keep the audience engaged during the presentation and how to handle Q&As. Earlier I had read a classic book on Crucial Conversations and I could connect both the books particularly on handling audience questions. Good short read. 3 stars.

[Joseph · Rating 3 out of 5]

The collection is a hodge-podge that goes from high-level strategizing to niche problem-solving. While a nice grouping of articles, it does not cover a large enough swath of the subject matter to be useful in a general sense. As such, it is not an exhaustive resource nor the practical primer one would hope. One might peruse the article titles first and see if something is useful before investing in the entire book.

[Drew Mayerson · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first part was the most helpful. It discusses public cleaning from a contributed at Ted. Quite honestly I didn’t think the rest was all that helpful at all. Be self aware, care about your audience, and communicate with them like they are an old friend who knows you.

[Alberto de Vega Luna · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars
As with other books including a collection of articles, there are some of them more interesting or useful than others. The two last articles are too short to be useful. Take a look at the list of articles before buying it.

[Spencer Brauchla · Rating 3 out of 5]

Majority of the book emphasizes personal communication rather than public speaking specifically. I wish the entire collection was more similar to the first two articles (speaking as someone looking for methods to improve my public speaking as I prepare for a business presentation).

[Pelin Üstün · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alıntılar:

"jestler sözcüklerden daha yüksek sesle konuşur...."

"Bir konuşma hiç durmadan kelimeleri sıralamak değildir.."

"Yaşam enerjisi karanlık taraftan, acı çekmemize neden olan şeylerden gelir. Bu negatif güçlere karşı verilen mücadele bizi daha derin, daha dolu yaşamaya zorlar.."

"Kendini tanıma tüm büyük hikaye anlatımlarının temelidir..."

"Çocuklarına dik durmalarını ve gülümsemelerini söyleyen insanlar bir şeyi iyi biliyorlar: Bu basit kombinasyon, belki de güç ve sıcaklığı aynı anda yansıtmanın en iyi yoludur..."

"İnsanları motive etmek için; yön verme, empati kurma ve anlam oluşturma önemli unsurlardır."

"Fikirlerinizi benimsediklerinde dünyanın ne kadar iyi olacağını onlara gösterin."

[Arturo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great articles from HBR on effective presentations

Great articles from HBR on effective presentations and persuasion. Useful for anyone working in sales or leadership positions. I particularly enjoyed the last three articles.

[Wan Farisan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book on public speaking

[Parker Samelson · Rating 3 out of 5]

A few very helpful articles and several very boring and obvious ones.

[Nell · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first half of the collection has some solid essays and advise.

[PS Pranika · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good - but - Hodge-podge

can read 👍

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Target readers are CEOs

[Joshua Waldron · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have loved all the HBR books. They are a collection of the best HBR articles on a topic. This one did not disappoint. Lots of great content.

[Zhe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some good tips - took notes in my google drive. Honestly been doing well in my presentations for work and blew it out the water for some interviews with tips here.

[Maggie Gately]

School

[Janet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Helpful tips, but very business and management oriented

[Derek Forrest Miles · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book will help you with your public speaking skills by a lot if you are new to public speaking.

[Ethan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Worth the read. Lots of tips and applicable ways to improve public speaking.

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really good, logical takeaways. I found a lot of the content was very applicable in day to day work.

[Peg · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read the ebook.

[Sage · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are some useful tips in this. Real world examples were given.