How to Speak So People Really Listen: The Straight-Talking Guide to Communicating with Influence and Impact

The way we communicate our message is vital. Our delivery can make the difference between winning business and losing it, between getting our dream job and missing out, or between raising lots of money for a charity we're passionate about and collecting just a few coins. A slick presentation can win friends and influence people, while the opposite can put them to sleep.

But how do we make sure we get noticed when we speak, and get our message across in a way that convinces others to buy from us, hire us, or support our cause? This book will show you how.

"How to Speak So People Really Listen" is a no-nonsense guide that'll help you perfect your pitch and improve your communication skills so your audience believes you, trusts you, and remembers you. It's packed with actionable advice, tools and takeaways that you can put into practice immediately, so you can deliver your message with impact.

So who's this book for? It's for anyone who regularly presents to others. It's especially suitable for sales representatives, team leaders, managers, CEOs, politicians, coaches, and anyone whose work or hobby involves public speaking.

You'll get the most out of this book if you're ready to act on McGee's suggestions. The author clearly wants readers to take his advice and run with it, rather than mull it over or analyze it. This book is light on theory but heavy on tools, so if you like that style, you'll love this book. You can also be sure the author's tips have been well researched.

Paul McGee is one of Britain's leading speakers and seminar presenters on change, inspiring leadership, and communicating with confidence. He's spoken to a quarter of a million people in 40 countries, and he's sold more than 200,000 books worldwide.

His academic background is in behavioral and social psychology, and he spent his early career in human resources and people development. He's the founder of the brand "Shut Up, Move On," or SUMO for short, which is the title of one of his bestselling books. He's also known as the SUMO guy.

So keep listening to hear how to make your message stick, how to structure your talk with style, and how to avoid getting stage fright.

As the subtitle suggests, this is an easy-to-read, straight-talking book that gets right to the point. It's short, neatly structured, and packed with bullet points, with lists of takeaways at the end of each chapter. McGee also uses speech bubbles to highlight some of his top tips. So you definitely won't get lost in this book or struggle to find the author's main messages.

His writing is crammed with acronyms, such as SLIM, which stands for "Say Less, Impact More," and his style is colloquial, with punchy chapter headings like "Sort out your skeletons" and "Grab ‘em by the eyeballs."

Some readers may find his chatty, informal tone grating after a while and the book's structure too simplistic, but we think both are well suited to a short, "how to" business book. Bear in mind that McGee is British and some of his references to British popular culture may not be familiar to audiences of other nationalities.

This book is divided into three parts, the first being "The seven great sins of speaking," followed by "Eight great ways to speak so people really listen." The third part is called, "I'm glad you asked that …" and contains three key questions McGee is often asked. These cover nerves and how to manage them, the use of humor in presentations, and the importance of body language when speaking to others. We like the clarity of this structure.

Let's now take a closer look at some of McGee's tips, starting with the first sin: a failure to make your message sticky or memorable.

You may have experienced death by PowerPoint, or come away from a presentation wondering what was said. Or on the flipside, perhaps you can remember a speaker you heard years ago because he was funny, unique or off-the-wall.

To give a memorable presentation, you must know how to cover your message in Velcro rather than coat it in Teflon, McGee says, with his characteristic light humor. This is more important today than ever, since your audience may already be feeling overwhelmed with information before you even get up on stage.

One way to make your message stick is to use unfamiliar, quirky or visual language. Commonly used phrases go in one ear and out the other but, if we can come up with something original or a phrase that conjures up an image, we'll stand a better chance of being heard.

McGee says his name isn't particularly memorable and nor does he have a life story that's out of the ordinary. But he gets remembered for his brand – the SUMO guy. It conjures up a picture, even if McGee wears a suit and looks nothing like a wrestler.

Likewise, in his presentations, he uses language that's different to the norm. So instead of using bullet points that say "Take responsibility," "Have a positive attitude," and "Set goals," his read: "Change your T-shirt," "Develop fruity thinking," and "Ditch Doris Day."

McGee doesn't explain the link between these points and maybe there doesn't have to be one. The phrases themselves stick in people's minds. Boring and bland won't get you noticed, but quirky and different will, he says.

Later in the book, McGee drives this point home, suggesting we give our talks interesting titles and our emails eye-catching headings. When Virgin sends its staff survey out, for example, the email header reads, "How deep is your love?" That beats "staff survey" hands down.

The author also suggests using repetition more, referring to how Steve Jobs used to repeat the same thing several times to get his point across. That's because repetition aids retention.

These suggestions are simple but they make sense, although it's clear that speakers need to tailor their level of quirkiness and the language they choose to their audience.

Let's now look at why it's vital to give your presentation a good structure or a strong skeleton. McGee suggests following the three Gs: grab ‘em, give ‘em, goodbye.

How you begin your presentation and what you say in the first 90 seconds are key to retaining your audience's attention. You need to make sure you answer the fundamental question, "Why should I care?"

Next, you need to get your main points across. What does your audience need to know? And what stories or examples can you use to illustrate your points and make them memorable?

Finally, give some thought to your ending. It's too easy to end quickly or fizzle out, leaving your audience wondering if it's time to leave. An easy option is to end on questions, but McGee advises against this. Questions do come at the end, but if they're at the very end, your audience decides how your presentation ends, not you.

Maybe you won't know the answer to the last question and that's not how you want to be remembered. So after the last question, take control back and end with a story or a quote. Or you could recap your main points, spell out what the next steps are, or make a call to action, asking your audience to commit to doing something after your talk.

Alternatively, you could use a chronological and logical approach, taking your audience on a journey. So for a corporate presentation, you could start by looking back at what the company did in the past, then look at what it's doing today, and assess what has been learned in the process. You could then look forward to the future, explain why you're taking a certain path, identify the challenges ahead, explain how you'll overcome them, and set out the next steps.

Wrapping your presentation around three points is another clean, simple structure that works well, McGee says.

We like that the author offers different structures in this chapter that can be adapted to different scenarios. He adds a quote from another Steve Jobs speech that was built around three points. This helps bring his theory to life.

Let's now look at one of the three questions from the final part of the book, the one on managing our nerves. The author presents seven techniques for this, and, while his advice is mostly common sense, he presents it in a memorable way.

We especially like the tip called "manage your movies." When we get nervous, some of us let our anxiety get the better of us and we begin to imagine things going terribly wrong. But if we imagine things going wrong before a presentation, our brains will respond as if that catastrophe is actually happening. This condition is sometimes called anticipatory stress. The key is not to "make a Technicolor movie" out of that scenario.

If your brain insists on imagining the worst, try giving the disaster movie a fuzzy or blurred focus in your mind. Better still, change the plot and imagine your presentation going really well. But if you can't stop your imagination from projecting the worst-case scenario, remember you're the director of this movie and you can shout, "Cut!"

Another way to manage your nerves is to make sure you have a contingency plan, especially when it comes to your slides. Technology can often fail us just when we need it, so what will you do if the presentation you labored over for hours doesn't work? Maybe you'll want to take a flipchart and marker pen along, some photographs, or printed material, just in case. And make sure you leave plenty of time to arrive, so you're not thrown by unexpected delays on the way and don't feel rushed setting up.

You can also calm your nerves by thinking less about yourself and your performance, and more about your audience and what they're going to get out of your talk. So instead of thinking, "What will they think of me?" try asking, "How can I best serve my audience?" Your brain can only handle one thought at a time so, while it's thinking about the content of your presentation, it can't worry about your delivery.

Another question you could ask is, "What's the worst that can happen if I mess up this presentation?" That might help you gain a bit of perspective.

Finally, slowing your breathing and focusing on exhaling deeply will help slow your heart rate and calm your nerves. And remember, even if you are really nervous, the audience may not pick up on this.

These are obvious, commonsense tips you'll likely have heard before – and McGee admits this. But he presents them in a catchy, memorable way and uses anecdotes many readers will be able to relate to. That said, we'd have liked to hear more examples from well-known speeches or presentations, to help picture the tips in action.

The suggestions in this book aren't rocket science. We're pretty sure you know PowerPoint slides crammed with words in a tiny font will put your audience to sleep, while images and short phrases are more likely to win over the crowd. And much has been written about the power of using stories and anecdotes to get your message across. But McGee also offers useful takeaways you may not have considered, such as not finishing on questions, figuring out the end goal of your presentation before you start planning it, and using props in innovative ways.

This book's main strength, though, is the way McGee delivers his message. He is a straight-talking, no-nonsense guy who wants readers to act on his advice. He gives us plenty of opportunities to do so, with questions at the end of every chapter that can be applied to your own presentation style, and with lists of top tips that stick in your mind.

Our main criticism is that the content of "the seven great sins of speaking" in Part One is very like that of "the eight great ways to speak so people really listen" in Part Two. It might have been good to merge these two parts, as the sins contain plenty of tips, while the tips explain what not to do and why.

Otherwise, we have no problem recommending this book. Even if you've come across many of McGee's points before in other books on communication, there's no harm in being reminded – and you may well find a nugget or two of really useful insight that you can use in your next talk.

"How to Speak So People Really Listen," by Paul McGee, is published by Capstone, an imprint of John Wiley & Sons.

That's the end of this episode of Book Insights. Thanks for listening.