Leading Out Loud: The Authentic Speaker, the Credible Leader (Jossey Bass Business and Management Series)

This is a great book for adults pursuing or improving their leadership skills. Good inciteful material that is applicable for any occupation. A must read for business students!

A speaker may be able to wow an audience with technique and entertainment, but if everyone walks out the door unchanged, than the speaker is not a leader. The speaker who truly engages an audience and makes them think about themselves, their roles, their company or their country is rare indeed. To engage an audience on this level, you must have true conviction in what you say. At the heart of leadership is the ability to tap your own values and experiences and communicate them to others. Audiences today have grown much more cynical. They can detect falsehood from the back of the hall. Authenticity is the only thing that will reach them anymore. Terry Pearce has the following advice for people who need to improve speaking skills, and communicate effectively as leaders.

· Discover what matters to you. Uncover your values. Make sure that you don't say anything in your speech that contradicts your core values.

· Create a structure for your speech with a beginning, middle and end.

· Use data effectively. Whenever possible, use specific information rather than talking generally. Use examples.

· Use your personal experiences to connect with your audience.

The second edition of Pearce's book provides both insight and practical advice for persons who want to lead and inspire change. Organized in two parts, the book begins with an examination of leadership and a path for developing a "message platform for change," and it concludes with advice on how to communicate the message effectively. As Pearce says, "in the process of change, communication is what fuels progress toward the new state." Whether you are leading a family, a business or seeking political office, this book will help you connect to the power of your voice as a tool in the process of change.

I feel really bad for those poor students of Mr. Pearce who don't drop out of his class the first week.

This is the first book on public speaking that I've read where I honestly haven't taken anything from this book, and I've read about five. He talks about all of the mechanics of public speaking, but something big is missing from this book. Also, leadership via public speaking, which seems to be the titular topic of this book, is missing from the pages.

Mr. Pearce reminds me of one of my statistics professors. This professor, which I'll call Mr. Banal, was a very smart person, had studied a lot, was up on the current statistics methodologies, and was a nice person. However, Mr. Banal's lecture consisted almost entirely of an analysis of what he thought of the textbook. Mr. Banal always had some new "insight"--which usually amounted to a very minor disagreement that he had with the author of the text. He talked about this minor disagreement for the entire lecture hour. I think that doing this allowed him to feel good about himself, because he was proving to the students that he was smarter than the author of the text.

This was really confusing to me. Who should I believe, Mr. Banal or the author of the statistics text? The author seemed a lot more interesting (which is funny considering the subject), but Mr. Banal was the one who ultimately would be testing me.

This is what Mr. Pearce does in his book. He is constantly rewriting speeches of others into a "better speech." A really funny example of this occurs during the end of the book, where he's quoting Anita Roddick, managing director of The Body Shop International. Roddick is an excellent public speaker, and he quotes often from one of her speeches, which is probably the most interesting part of the book. Toward the end, Mr. Pearce cherry picks a paragraph from her speech and reworks it. The initial paragraph wasn't all that bad, but Mr. Pearce's "improved" version of it was terrible.

This is the same kind of difference between a sports commentator and an avid fan. The sports commentator will describe the athlete, what the athlete did during the performance, and trace the effects of the athlete's performance. This is very complex and requires a lot of skill.

The avid fan will say things like, "I would have done this...I would have done that." This requires very little skill at all.

Mr. Pearce is the avid fan, telling us what he would have done, rather than actually doing anything himself.

It kind of seems like Mr. Pearce was writing this book for the dean of UC-Berkeley, rather than for the public.

Business coach Terry Pearce teaches you how to put the personal perspective back into your professional communications. With a credible and authoritative voice, he explains how authentic human connection is missing from today's communications, even though people crave it, especially as they evaluate who they trust to lead them through rapid change. He maintains that leaders who communicate authentically and passionately will inspire loyalty and make their mark. While Pearce is clearly convinced about the importance of inspiring your constituents, the pace of his book won't exactly move your spirit. He walks you slowly and carefully through the discipline he uses to help clients rediscover their authentic voices and craft messages that resonate. His corporate and political client list is quite select, but we find his communication strategies relevant for anyone who is leading change - whether you are building a small community or a large company.