NON-OBVIOUS GUIDE TO BETTER PRESENTATIONS

A new installment in the Non-Obvious Guide series provides a comprehensive plan for improving one’s performance in all kinds of presentations.

People may think of presentations as being confined to the world of businesses and PowerPoint, but their essence—delivering a message and some version of oneself to other people, including strangers—is something all of us do almost every day, and this has only become truer since the initial outbreak of Covid-19, when many people effectively became onscreen performers overnight. Professional coach Farrington draws on both her past as an actor and her long experience of helping clients with public speaking in order to make and reinforce her central point: that making any kind of presentation is giving a performance. It requires research, rehearsal, and backup plans in case of disaster. She organizes much of her advice around what she terms the “Three C’s” of a good presentation: confidence, conviction, and connection. Each chapter is designed for maximum utility, featuring chapter summaries, visuals, bulleted points, key takeaways, and links to further online resources. Many illustrations and charts accompany Farrington’s discussions of every aspect of giving a presentation, from nonverbal communication to aspects of one’s voice, including resonance, pitch, projection, and hellers—Farrington’s term for filler words and sounds, such as um, like, and y’know, which many people use during gaps in their speech.

Readers will likely be hard-pressed to decide which aspect of Farrington’s authority is more useful to them as they read: her background in public-speaking coaching or her background in acting. Fortunately, they don’t need to choose, as both are wonderfully represented throughout this book. Intriguingly, she tells tales of anonymized clients whose intelligence and authenticity seemed to vanish the moment they got in front of an audience, at which point they went mute or droned on like robots. She’s coached many such people to better results, but her theatrical background is equally vital to the advice she gives here—particularly when it comes to rehearsal, a key element that she warns is often neglected in an age of seemingly casual Zoom meetings. For instance, she mentions how actors divide their scripts into “beats” (“any time you have a change in emotion, a new thought, a new tactic, or a new engagement tool”) to help them to master the whole. Likewise, she provides readers with extensive tips on vocals, observing that “it’s a cruel betrayal when a highly intelligent person is sabotaged by the sound of their own voice.” She’s insightful and empathetic on a range of other topics, from audience engagement to the “ick factor” of using green screens during at-home video presentations. She always seems to be operating from the assumption that her readers are smart and capable of any improvement they want to make. In the undeniably vast crowd of books about public speaking, this one stands out for its intelligent, direct approach.

An indispensable manual on all aspects of public speaking and a boon to those who may be anxious about it.