This has arrived from central Europe:

Back in February you held a lecture which I attended and from where I departed with a signed copy of your book. Above your signature it said “Anyone can hold a good speech, if they read this book”.

Two weeks later I finished the book on my way to the final round of selection for the International Geography Olympiad. During the final round half of the scores came from different forms of interviews and a presentation of 5 minutes, for which we only had 20 minutes to prepare after receiving the topic. During those 20 minutes several of your advices rang out in my head, such as when it comes to PowerPoint, less is more. I received a score of 14.75 out of 15 for that presentation.

The guideline “It’s not what you say, it’s what they hear” also helped me a lot not just during the presentation, but during the interviews as well. I didn’t have a single point that needed clarification thanks to the attention I started to pay to obvious wording.

Long story short, I went on to the national team as the best of the four team members, for which I believe I owe you and your book a lot. And indeed, anyone can hold a good speech, but reading your book makes it much, much easier.

Thank you very much!

*blushes prettily*

It’s of course a terrific test of any candidate to ask her/him give a short presentation with very little time to prepare. That may or may not reveal what they know about the topic of the presentation. The point is to test their ability to communicate – to show that they know what strong convincing communication is.

And that is all about some very Big things delivered with an eye to many tiny points of detail.

Is public speaking difficult? On the whole, yes. But as we see from the message above, there is help at hand that makes a drastic if not transformative difference.

Speeches for Leaders.

You know what to do.