Book Review: Get Smarter by Seymour Schulich

                                                        

           An amazing book filled with so many lessons on Business, Life and Success. Every chapter amusing cartoon illustrations that were funny, inspiring and thought-provoking.Excerpt below of one chapter on the Power of Speaking

Speeches-Ten Rules to Utilize

Over the span of forty years, I have give a few hundred speeches. Here are some key rules I’ve acquired:

1^st Be brief:

People attention span is limited. Nobody ever complained about a speech being to short! Tell  your audience right up front how long the speech is going to run. This signals how long they’ll have to pay attention.

2^nd Try to communicate on main idea:

A common mistake is trying to pack into a speech four or five ideas. People are likely to remember only one idea, theme, or concept.

In a lecture to students, the same principles apply,  Leave a lot of time for questions.  Use audio-visual that are funny and attention-getting.

3^rd Create a surprise:

People love to be surprise.  As I got older, I always used the concept of surprise. Example are:

A)Having your entrance and exit marked by exciting folk songs or music;

B) Saying  something like, “this is a serious speech-above all there will be no clowning around.” Then have twelve clowns enter the room, make noise, handing out  cards, and leaving in ninety seconds;

C) instead of clowns, have a group of cheerleaders burst in and lead in a cheer for an honoured guest.

4^th   Use Humour:

Collect jokes books and select  three or four good one-liners or zingers. Comedy is very hard to do well. Test your material on several  people in advance. Personalize jokes by inserting  the names of prominent people in the audience into the comedy material. This creates a sense of participation and identification by the audience.

5^th  Slow it down:

Talk slowly and mark lots of points to pause. Give the audience time to comprehend and assimilate your message. There’s nothing worse than a speaker who rushes through a script he reads.

6^th  Use cue cards and look up of  often:

Don’t appear to read you material. Make protracted eye contact with your audience. Talk with them, don’t read to them.

7^th Self-praise is no honour:

Get a good two-minute lead-in from someone who tells your audience why you’re very important and why they should listen to you.

8^th   Never speak before the main course in a dinner speech:

Don’t get  between people and their food. (The same  principle applies to dogs.)

9^th  Reuse good material:

Write a good speech then keep finding new audiences on which to utilize all or parts of it.

10^th  Use positive body language:

Smile, and use your hands to make emphasize points. Get out from behind the podium if possible.