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Book Review: The Art of Speeches and Presentations

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17th Aug 2012
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I read a lot of business books, but despite giving lots of presentations I’ve never read one on the topic. This was mostly by choice as I always liked the idea of ‘being myself’ explains AccountingWEB member Ralph Smith.

Having read The Art of Speeches and Presentations by Philip Collins I may have been over optimistic by not reading up. Straight away the writing style in the book makes it clear the author has a way with words and has great enthuse for his work.

Given his career as former chief speech writer to Tony Blair he’s more than qualified to write on the topic. It’s the kind of book that you can recommend to almost anyone in business and they will thank you for it.

The introduction mentions some famous speeches by the likes of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela. In the authors words speeches are crafted and fashioned.

The entire chapter structure is loosely based on the mnemonic attention to detail so the key areas are: Delivery, Expectations, Topic, Audience, Individual and Language.

The book can be summarised in the following sentence “The performer to emerge from these pages should be the best speaker you can be”. Collins also mentions adding a “Version of you” to every speech.

The focus of the book is more on content than delivery; Collins advises starting with writing a single page and cutting it down to a single paragraph. The argument being if you can’t do that you don’t have a solid enough grasp of your argument. I genuinely liked that idea. There’s not a lot worse than listening to someone meander round a topic for 20 minutes without getting to serious point.

In conclusion the book provides readers with a nice tool kit to assist with working on their own speeches and presentations.

It’s easy to read, easy to use and I would recommend it.

  • Title: The Art of Speeches and Presentations
  • Author: Philip Collins
  • Publisher: Wiley

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